Matt McIrvin's Freaky Alternate Reality

As I mentioned earlier, the Republican Party is planning an effort in Ohio that involves getting recruits to challenge the credentials of large numbers of voters at polling places, with the official goal of preventing voter fraud, and the probable effect of delaying the vote, producing long lines, intimidating newly registered voters and ultimately suppressing turnout.

Josh Marshall has the goods on who's behind this. The new chief of the Bush campaign's get-out-the-vote operations in Ohio is Larry Russell, who used to work at the same job for the GOP in South Dakota. Russell resigned less than a week before his reassignment to Ohio, amid a scandal involving improper notarization of absentee ballot applications, which could have rendered applications submitted in good faith invalid. Six of his staffers have been charged with misdemeanor violations.

It's hard to say whether the South Dakota case was just sloppiness on the part of insufficiently vetted third parties, or genuine malice. Based on what I've seen so far, I'm actually leaning toward the former, though Marshall wouldn't agree. But it doesn't speak well for the team's ability to stay in the bounds of election law, and three of the charged staffers are currently working with Russell in Ohio.

In better news, Bush's New England regional director, who was involved in jamming phones in New Hampshire to prevent vote reminders from going out, has finally resigned.