A little local Commonwealth of Kentucky stuff here, but it might arise in your own state.
States’ Secretaries of State Are Tipping Balance of Power
In 2000 it was Katherine Harris, the secretary of state of Florida, who made critical decisions that helped swing the state Republican.
In 2004 it was Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio’s Secretary of State, who earned democratic wrath for ensuring a close Republican win.
In 2008 it was the Secretary of State of Minnesota, Mark Richie, who handed that state’s Senate seat to Al Franken and control of Congress to the Democrats.
In every major election since 2000 Secretaries of State have emerged as key, often decisive, and partisan figures in the outcomes of those ballot battles.
Here in Kentucky our own illustrious Secretary of State Trey Grayson is running for senate to fill the seat vacated by a retiring Jim Bunning. Rand Paul has made the request that Grayson recuse himself from the tabulation of the GOP primary vote, in a statement Rand Paul said…
“I really feel like if you’re in the election, you shouldn’t count the votes,” Paul told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “I think he shouldn’t have access to any computers counting or tabulating the votes.”
I find this is be a reasonable request – if you’re in a race should you really oversea the tallying of the results of that race? If it is not a ethical violation it certainly gives the appearance of impropriety at least in my eyes and I am a voter.
The Grayson camp said…
Grayson spokesman Les Fugate called the request absurd. Fugate said Grayson wouldn’t recuse himself.
“It is an insult to the judgment of Kentuckians that Mr. Paul suggest Secretary Grayson stop doing the job that they elected him to do,” Fugate said. “Secretary Grayson is a national leader in elections reform who has received broad, bipartisan support for his commonsense ideas that make our elections more secure, more accessible, and more honest. This political request is absurd and blatantly self-serving.“
“Absurd and blatantly self-serving”, really? I disagree and find the Grayson camps response more than a little defensive, but perhaps I’m bias as I’ve stated previously I’ve measured and weighed the candidates and I found Grayson lacking and I agree Grayson was elected to do a job by the people of Kentucky, however I doubt that the people of Kentucky elected him to oversee his own election, talk about a fox watching the hen-house.
To paraphrase William Shakespeare – me thinks the candidate doth protest too much.
Kentucky has a long history of political corruption and questionable elections so I ask Grayson why feed into the appearance of impropriety and as I’ve stated before don’t waste your time listening to what a candidate says right now on the trail, but look and see what they have done in the past.
As one reader pointed out as the saying goes… “It’s not who votes that counts, it’s who counts the votes.”
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