Walking through Athens during an election, I was filled with a sense of pride I have never quite before experienced as an American. In an election year, with America split into armed camps, the democratic process was in full force.
Standing on the corner of Court and Union, I could see to my right the Democratic and Republican tables, with various local candidates like judge candidates Mike Ward and Robert Shostak trying not to leer at each other at such a close distance, all the while glad-handing with the local electorate.
To my left, by the moorings of the various buggies, partisan Democrats and Republicans were handing out election gear, foisting sample ballots in voters' faces and imploring people to vote before it was too late (I myself got hassled several times, mostly because I lost my flimsy change your world sticker -the quality of which, I guessed at the time, was another example of Ohio GOP scrimping).
It was a perfect day. The sun was shining, and America was proactively facing the future. The line of so-called apathetic students up and down the Baker Center stairways waiting to vote was heartening.
But then, rain, an overzealous judge and Republican Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell intervened.
Blackwell, all over the national news lately because of his position as the overseer of Ohio's election, is Ohio's own Katherine Harris -a media hound with a partisan agenda. Blackwell is angling for a run at the governor's office in 2006 and is rarely shy about anything.
A Post photographer tried to take a picture of the aforementioned lines but was told by some of the poll workers that if he took a picture, he would be subject to arrest. This directive came from Blackwell, who banned all media personnel from entering a 100-foot radius around all polling locations in a directive last month, according to The Associated Press. Blackwell spokesman Carlo LoParo told the AP that the directive was intended to prevent a flood of media from disrupting the election through exit polls and was made last month. U.S. District Judge Paul Matia upheld the directive.
Luckily, big papers weren't buying. By the middle of the day, the Akron Beacon Journal had pestered the Appeals Court long enough for it to reverse Matia's decision. In doing so, it upheld the pesky First Amendment right to a free and unfettered press. The court could not support (Blackwell's) proposed restriction of the First Amendment's guarantee that state conduct shall not abridge 'freedom ... of the press' (http://pacer.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/04a0381p-06.pdf). The decision also said democracies die behind closed doors.
From provisional ballots to ballot weight to a steadfast support of Issue 1, Blackwell has been at the center of much controversy in this state. And at least from where I'm sitting, he's almost always on the wrong sides of all these artificially-created wedge issues.
-Kyle Kondik is The Post's associate editor. Send him an e-mail at kyle.kondik@ohiou.edu.
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Kyle Kondik
