The Ohio GOP would like to make Brunner no less than their version of Florida's former Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, who presided over the recount (and a record voter purge) in 2000 that left her state's citizens disillusioned about the electoral process. Republicans have already taken Brunner to the Supreme Court and back over an order than allows newly registered voters to participate in early voting — making it harder for GOP operatives to challenge their registrations. Brunner takes it all with a sense of equanimity, telling Seyward Darby, "But this too shall pass," despite the hate mail, death threats and fake-anthrax mailing she received in the wake of the Supreme Court decision that the registrations would stand. She and her staff and trying desperately to make sure that the election goes off with as few hitches as possible, and are leaving open the state's voter information hotline despite calls from in and out of state that have more to do with the already-decided court cases than helping individual voters exercise their rights.

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall [The New Republic]

Related: Jennifer Brunner [JFK Library Foundation]

Richard Hasen, a professor specializing in election law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, says in the Chicago Tribune that ''Election law has become political strategy." Hasen's not wrong, except about the timing — election law has been an electoral strategy since McCain's hero Barry Goldwater ran for President in 1964. Back then, it was called "ballot security" instead of "voter caging," but the principles were the same: target low income and minority voters whose housing situations might not be as stable as your average suburban white Republican voter with mailers marked "Do Not Forward." When they are returned to sender, get the person thrown off the voter rolls since they don't live where they say they live and, abrakazam!, you've got one less vote for the other party. It was so bad and so racist that the Republican party was forced to sign consent decrees agreeing not to do it anymore in 1982 and again in 1986. This, of course, did not stop the Republican party from doing it (at least) in 2004 in Ohio and Florida.

Not that caging was the only electoral problem in 2000, either — former Secretary of State Katherine Harris initiated a "felon purge" that illegally purged at least 2,000 former felons who had their rights restored from the voter rolls as well as thousands of other Floridians with "similar" names. Unsurprisingly, most of these people who were prevented from voting were African-American (and, in many cases, Democrats). Bush won Florida by less than 1,000 votes. But even what limited bad press the Republican party got from that hasn't stopped them in their quest to make sure that as many potential Democratic voters are purged from the rolls in time for Election Day — or should we start calling it coronation day?.

In 2007, the head of the Republican Party in Kansas was so emboldened by the fact that most people don't give a shit if voters (and particularly minority voters) are illegally disenfranchised that he actually sent out a letter bragging about the party's efforts to throw legal voters off the rolls. He's still the chair, by the way.

The Chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County, Michigan told reporters for the Michigan Messenger last month that they planned to challenge voters on election day based on lists of foreclosed homes in the county, in an effort to get voters thrown out of polling places. Of course in Michigan, as in the rest of the country, minority homeowners were far more likely to have been offered subprime mortgages and are thus far more likely to be caught up in the foreclosure crisis in Michigan. Unlike registration-caging which, when done by race, is illegal under the consent decree, it's apparently perfectly legal to challenge someone's right to vote at their polling place.

The Republican National Committee sent out "registration confirmation" mailers to thousands of registered Democratic voters in Florida this summer (you know, when the snow birds weren't there) with "do not forward" noticed attached in order to cage voters there as well. Their spokeswoman told a reporter that it "wasn't worth writing about," because, of course, they'd prefer that you not know that they're undertaking massive efforts to eliminate potential Democratic voters from non-provisional balloting on November 4th.

In Ohio, they've gone even further, filing lawsuits against the Secretary of State to keep anyone from voting in-person absentee that registered close to the deadline — as the woman pictured did. Can't you tell she shouldn't be allowed to vote? Can't you just see it in her face? Ohio law allowed people to vote in-person absentee before the registration deadline and the Secretary of State ruled that ballots not counted until election day weren't votes until Election Day. And — horrors — people that might not have the means to get back to the polls a month after they registered did so. Homeless people! Women at domestic violence shelters! The Ohio told the New York Post that they "smelled a rat" in that, because, you know, increasing voter turnout (which is embarrassingly low in this country) through making it easier for legal but disadvantaged voters to vote is totally shady. This is what they do: when they can't win on the issues, they'll win by hook or by crook or by making sure that your civil rights are violated and you can't do anything about it. Oh, and yes, Republicans are caging votes in Ohio again, too, in case they couldn't disenfranchise enough people by the registration deadline.

But they've got other tactics that they're hoping you can't tie to them. In 2002, the Republican-controlled Congress passed and President Bush signed into law the completely unironically named Help America Vote Act. That's the legislation that ushered in the days of electronic voting machines, by the way. But it also ushered in the days of database-checking and automatic verification that will kick out voter registrations if a typo some data-entry person making $6 stuck in or left out a letter somehow. They're checking your voter registration against your driver's license (took me an extra trip to the DMV to get mine right, by the way) and against the Social Security database which is so error-ridden even Republican-leaning groups like the Chamber of Commerce don't want to have to use it to see if you're eligible to work in this country. Oh, and they don't even have to tell you if you've been purged — you might just show up on Election Day and be told in a crowded room that they think you're a felon or an illegal immigrant or have registered in more than one place. That's not humiliating or intimidating or anything, or designed to get you to give up and go home. And that, of course, is if some GOP operative "observing" the election doesn't decide to challenge your right to vote at all based on some shadily-obtained caged list.

And don't let them pretend that this isn't part and parcel of how they expect to win. They know they're not going to win votes based on their policies at this point — hence with talking about Bill Ayers the "terrorist" BFF of Obama, hence with running nothing but negative ads, hence with not calling out their supporters on yelling "Kill him!" or "Off with his head" at rallies. But if they can't win with that, they'll win with this and hope that, as has always been the case, disenfranchised voters will head home and not scream, shout or try voting again. Because, after all, there's another election they want to win by hook or by crook next year, and a win's a win as George Bush proved in 2000.

States’ Actions to Block Voters Appear Illegal [NY Times]
Voter Reigstration Lawsuits Could Shape Nov. 4 Election [Chicago Tribune]
Voter Caging [Project Vote]
Voter Caging [Wikipedia]
Voter Supression [ePluribus Media]
Botched Name Purge Denied Some the Right to Vote [Washington Post]
Kansas GOP Chair Sends Email Boasting of Voter Caging [Crooks & Liars]
Kansas Republican Party Officials [Kansas GOP]
Lose Your House, Lose Your Vote [Michigan Messenger]
New NCRC Study Shows Racial Disparities In High-Cost Lending Remain Entrenched [National Community Reinvestment Coalition]
Democrats, Florida Elections Officials Criticize GOP Mailing [St. Petersburg Times]
Ohio Republicans Use Lawsuit To Fight for State's Crucial Votes [Wall Street Journal]
GOP Smells Rat in Ohio [NY Post]
Nearly 600,000 Subject to Possible Caging in Ohio [Miller-McCune]
Immigration [U.S. Chamber of Commerce]
Red Flag On Purging Voter Rolls [CBS News]

• The original terrorist — not the fist bumping kind — knows who he wants us to elect. Surprise! It's John McCain. [US News & World Report]
• That might be because he escaped us at least twice by going into Pakistan and because our troops weren't allowed to walk into Pakistan, and John McCain plans to continue that policy. [CBS News]
• And, like he plans to leave Pakistan alone, McCain's decided to leave Michigan alone, too. Guess they figured that they wouldn't be able to disenfranchise enough foreclosed-upon voters to eke out a win after all. [Washington Post]
• Since he's staying the course in Philly, though, voter intimidation tactics continue apace. [Philly.com]

• Because, if he doesn't, he's pretty well fucked in the electoral college. [Politico]
• Sort of like Sarah Palin's wrist supposedly is. Unless it's just a tactic to garner some sympathy, which it totally is. How many women around John McCain have to sport bum wrists before someone starts asking questions? [Politico]
• Barack and Michelle will celebrate their 16th wedding anniversary tomorrow with a quiet dinner that Barack requested the press pool leave them alone for. Fat chance, sucker. We want pictures, and so does Axelrod. [Huffington Post]
• Oh, hey, Bob Barr is still running! He thinks McCain is a hypocrite. Run, Bob, Run! [The Hill]
• Also, women find Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour is a sexist hypocrite. [Pandagon]
• Wall Street Journal reporter Dorothy Rabinowitz thinks that overreaching surveillance by our government that is eroding our civil rights is totes okay with her because people died on September 11th. What's that saying? Those who would sacrifice freedom for security... [Washington Independent]

• McCain suggested he might suspend his campaign again so that he can really broker a bailout plan to save the country and be a hero... and we all know how well that worked out the last time. [The Nation]
• An actuarial company has predicted that McCain has a 25 percent chance of dying in office his second term, which is why Sarah Palin is cracking jokes about Joe Biden's age and asked people whether they want "the new energy, the new face, the new ideas" in the White House in her new interview with Katie Couric. [MSNBC, Politico]
• By the way, despite the fact that Republican leaders initially claimed it was Pelosi's partisan speech that caused Republicans to vote against the bailout plan — a stance mocked by no less than Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann and Rush Limbaugh — it turns out that it was actually Newt Gingrich's fault! He ginned up opposition to the bill to test the waters for a 2012 Presidential run before releasing a tepid statement of support while the Members he conned voted his will in the floor. Dick. [Huffington Post, Huffington Post, Politico, Huffington Post]
• The Republican strategy to win in Ohio — as in Michigan before that — remains to disenfranchise new, poor and minority voters. For real. It's easier than winning based on your candidate or the issues, apparently. [MSNBC, Michigan Messenger]

• Palin's former aides admit that she's a little ADD about debate prep but usually pulls it out in the end because she's all charming and shit. [LA Times, Andrew Sullivan]
• Palin gave her first newspaper interview — via e-mail, naturally — and managed not to stick her foot in it. Her staff managed to do little more than reiterate talking points in e-mail format, but it's a start. [Mat-Su Frontiersman]
• Gwen Ifill broke her ankle this week (Steve Schmidt has nothing to do with it, he swears) but neither rain nor snow nor dark of night will keep her from asking Sarah Palin about foreign policy. [Fishbowl LA]
• Bill Clinton plans to suck it up and do a couple of Obama rallies in Florida so people will stop saying he's bitter and not really keen on an Obama presidency. Now if only he can keep the passive-aggressive slights to himself while doing them! [The Guardian]

MEGAN: Hey, it's finally Friday! I get to sleep in tomorrow!

JASON Hey. Me too! So remember how everyone said, "OMGZ. You have to stop attacking Sarah Palin! It only makes her stronger?"

MEGAN: Actually, I think I said, please stop attacking her because it makes us look bad. And, specifically, please stop attacking her for gendered reasons.

JASON Well, certain criticisms, especially gendered criticisms, do make us look bad. Substantive ones, however, work.

MEGAN: Also helpful: getting a Republican Senator to say that saying she has foreign policy experience is an insult to the intelligence of the American people.

JASON Yeppers! Hagel's just the latest conservative to do so, following David Brooks and Charles Krauthammer (what Teutonic supervillain hasn't dreamed of calling himself DER KRAUTHAMMER), and, of course, the off-camera Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan. Those guys make Palin-contrarianism okay for others, though you watch - Brooks will change his mind as soon as the wind changes direction: you need to be humming "Personal Jesus" in order to have more depeche mode than Brooks. And, of course, Tina Fey has made it okay to make fun of Palin. Even Palin can do it, with the sound down!

MEGAN: Speaking of Peggy...

Hoover was not good for the Republican brand.

And the Democrats are mean for trying to turn Bush into Hoover because GWB has been soooo good for the Republican brand. Just as Tom Davis.

JASON She seems awash in contradiction:

Both the Democrats and the Republicans spent the week treating the catastrophe as a political opportunity. This was unserious. A serious approach might have addressed large questions such as: Was this crisis not, at bottom, a failure of stewardship?

Instead, from Barack Obama: It's the Republicans' fault, and John McCain means more of the same. From McCain: We're reformers and we'll clean up the mess, unlike Mr. I Can't Think of Anything to Do but Raise Taxes.

It seems to me that Obama, in this case, is...I dunno — pointing out the BAD STEWARDSHIP.

MEGAN: Uhh, but then she sorta goes here:

A fearless prediction: My beautiful election enters its dark phase.

Lots of signs of the new darkness. Mr. Obama's army is swarming, blocking lines when Obama critics show up for radio interviews. A study out Thursday said the Obama campaign has become more negative than the McCain campaign.

At least she didn't call it a "black" phase.

Oh, and here's the best rationale she can come up with of how "constrained" McCain will be if he wins (so go ahead and vote for him, you know ya wanna):

A New York liberal leaning toward Mr. McCain told me this week he has no fear that Mr. McCain may be a more militant figure than Mr. Obama. We already have two wars, "we're out of army." Even if Mr. McCain wanted a war, he said, he couldn't start one.

Ah, the old "scarce resources" argument. Sure, we could never, like, institute a draft. Start a new Cold War by being super-hawkish on Russia. We would never start a third war when we've already got troops in 2, totally not. So, Vote McCain! Since he can't start a third war his first day in office.

JASON Oy. Noonan. Let's all make the election "beautiful" again. Maybe she hasn't noticed the creepy "Drill, Baby, Drill" chants?

MEGAN: Maybe she has, and they made certain parts of her tingly?

JASON The problem we have is not that we can't start new wars. It's that we can't finish them.

MEGAN: We start new ones to distract from the fact that we haven't finished the old ones. Oh, hey, speaking of unfinished wars.

JASON HA. Yeah. See. That's how you go to war without an army. People forget about the Contras. And the, uhm...mujahadeen.

By the way, according to an email I just received (so take it with a grain of salt, because my inbox gets filled with apocrypha, spam, and letters authored by Matt Stoller), Ari Fleischer on the Today show this morning said that the financial crisis was basically the public's fault. [He did. I heard him. -Ed.] Y'all borrowed all this money!

MEGAN: Yeah, it's no longer "America, Fuck Yeah!" it's now "America, Fuck You!"
Fuck you for believing George Bush when he asked you to spend our way out of the first recession to keep the terrorists from winning.

Fuck you for buying houses you couldn't afford as everyone in and out of government told you prices would go up forever and ever.

Fuck you for taking on credit card debt to finance groceries and big screen TVs and everything else you thought you needed when what you really needed was to buy some fucking Big Boy Bootstraps and make enough money to not bother John McCain.

JASON Ahh, but you have to admire Fleischer. He's a pure shithead and he knows it. He's utter, sucking venality and he embraces it!

MEGAN: Ari Fleischer can go Fuck Himself.

JASON Ari Fleischer has already been there and back.

MEGAN: Ari Fleischer must be an extremely flexible person. Please note that I did not call him a "man."

JASON Noted!

MEGAN: Moving on from Ari Fleischer's amazing ability to toss his own salad (he does like it spicy and a little earthy), the polls show us white women are realizing that maybe, just maybe, McCain doesn't have our best interests at heart even if he does have one of us on the ticket, and are swinging back to Obama.

JASON Right. This is, I think, a by-product of the fact that Palin's appeal is waning, and more women are learning about McCain's stand on issues that matter to them. Months ago, researchers found wide variance in whether women were simply aware of McCain's opinion, and posited that once they knew, they'd shy away. What's going on with the white men, though? And, I'm asking!

MEGAN: Daddy issues?

JASON Because it seems to me, the Palin pick ought to hurt McCain there, too.

MEGAN: Do men vote for candidates they sort of want to sleep with?

JASON I mean, if Palin was a bona fide Margaret Thatcher type, you'd think that'd play better.

MEGAN: See, I don't know, I feel like the Palin-lovers are the same guys that were running around screaming "cankles" 6 months ago, you know?

JASON And texting you!

MEGAN: Oh, God, you know that asshole is voting for McCain. In fact, I do know because I got a Facebook news feed that told me so!

JASON And doing the other 19 things to ensure NO SEXING.

MEGAN: He was also numbers 1 and 11.

JASON You are totally right. Yikes. It was Tucker Bounds, wasn't it?

MEGAN: Tucker Bounds would've probably been an improvement. I believe Ana Marie and I determined he's just a dirty little sub that likes to be humiliated. I think, the dudes who are all into Palin now, it's some combination of chickenhawkishness that appeals to them about McCain, some sort of boastful "I could survive Viet Cong torture too, motherfucahhhh!" and some combination of that, to that kind of lame, text-messaging, small-dicked asshole Sarah Palin is indeed the kind of woman they'd like to think they could attract and even date. The difficulty with that is that Sarah Palin wouldn't put up with their shit, either. You see Todd yesterday? The whole time in Iowa on stage, there was this hot blonde totally checking him out and he didn't even notice. That's because Sarah doesn't fuck around and he knows it. We can at least give her credit for that.

JASON Word.

MEGAN: Okay, also, with all these "give money to Planned Parenthood in Palin's name" things floating around, I would like to now encourage an actual dirty trick that could hurt the "Palin" campaign.

JASON Because it mostly is the Palin campaign, now. Though Ana Marie said that in Wisconsin last night, people didn't walk out when McCain spoke.

MEGAN: Bob Barr, who is on the ballot in 44 states and suing to get on 5 more probably needs money. And, obviously, the biggest donors to Nader in 2000 were Republicans. Barr has the potential to spoil at least Georgia, if not places like Ohio and Florida. If you've got extra cash and you want to fuck with the Republicans in more than a symbolic way, swallow, swallow, swallow that bile and give to Bob Barr. But only if you are maxed out to Obama.

JASON Yeah, exactly. I agree. I mean, if i were an Obama supporter who'd maxed out my donations, I would totes give to Barr. All those people who are making cool YouTube ads for Obama? Take a minute and do one up for Barr, too.

MEGAN: That's how a real dirty trick works. Well, that and this way, which is a great example of how Republicans are trying to disenfranchise voters in swing states besides Michigan.

JASON Right. You get all sorts of things like this. I remember a few elections ago, up in Baltimore? People woke up on election day to postcards that said stuff like you couldn't vote if you were late with the rent and shit. If the Dems are smart, they have people going door-to-door, laying this mythology bare right now.

MEGAN: Also, if you are challenged at your polling place, fight the fuck back. Think of it as pissing on Tucker Bounds. Everyone wins!

• Michelle Obama is so endearingly naive. Today, she told her audience "People shouldn't make a decision this time based on, 'I like that guy' or 'she's cute.' And I'm talking about me." Michelle, at this point, let's just do whatever it takes to get your husband elected, okay? [Huffington Post]
• Especially since voting machines in 10 swing states are still fucked up. [CNN]
• And because John McCain is standing behind his remarks about not meeting with the democratically-elected Prime Minister of Spain unless he determines that fucking Spain is sufficiently committed to human rights and democracy. Which country is torturing people again? That's us, right? [Politico]
• While we're at it, someone probably ought to tell Sarah Palin that mocking Joe Biden's age isn't a good idea when your running mate is Methuselah, let alone when you get it wrong. [USA Today]

• The stock market regained almost all the value it lost yesterday, once again proving that financial "experts" are about as expert at finance as monkeys are with Shakespeare. [Washington Post]
• The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations finally got around to noticing that putting Sarah Palin on the dais was probably not good for their anti-Iran rally once Democrats started dropping like flies, so they dis-invited everyone. Should be a fun rally now! [Politico]
• There are six Barack Obamas running for office in Brazil because Brazil allows people to pick any name to run under. There are no John McCains. No way, no how, not now, not McCain. [The Guardian]
• George "Macaca" Allen, still surprised that being a racist in Virginia actually doesn't get you elected sometimes, will be headlining a racial unity rally in Fairfax. And it's actually not a Klan rally, it's supposed to encourage people of color to vote Republican. That'll work. [Think Progress]

• The Dow lost about another 450 points today even though the federal government has decided to buy out (read: nationalize) anything they need to to keep out economy from collapsing. [Washington Post]
• Speaking of, Morgan Stanley might merge with Wachovia, which would make Goldman Sachs the only remaining stand-alone investment bank in the United States. Seriously. [NY Times]
• But it's all going to be okay because the Bush Administration might use the end of its term in office to create a whole new agency dedicated to buying up all the bad debt and defunct financial institutions that its policies created in the last 7.5 years. Hey, did I mention the word "nationalization" already? Good. [NY Times]
• Hey, look! Something shiny! Don't watch the end of capitalism! Lori Drew is moving her family to an undisclosed location. [St. Charles Journal]

• Hillary Clinton canceled an appearance at an anti-Iran rally because the organizers thought it would be a supercoolfun idea to put her on the dais with Sarah Palin less than two months before the election and didn't think it necessary to inform her. Um, obviously. [Associated Press]
• The polls show McCain and Obama pretty damn tight in too damn many battleground states. [Marc Ambinder]
• Known elitist Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild and former major Democratic figure says all kinds of unbelievable crap about why she's now supporting McCain, but the funniest part is when she says it's about voter disenfranchisement and didn't know that the Republicans are actively seeking to disenfranchise legal voters in the general election to help he new best buddy. Ok, here's a woman you can hate on. Please, enjoy. [Huffington Post]
• McCain and Palin will be doing their deathly tango on Larry King tonight (and feel free to use this as an open thread if you're not watching Project Runway), but before that Swampland's Ana Marie Cox and I will be liveblogging her own torture: sitting through a McCain townhall meeting. Join us back here at 7! [Think Progress]