Since it appeared that the Ohio gubernatorial race wasn’t going to be as hotly contested as I originally believed earlier this year, I haven’t been paying quite as much attention to the minutiae of that particular race for a while. And it’s not like I’ve had my head in the sand — I’ve been reading the paper and watching the news, and I’m generally up on what’s happening with the election. So how in the WORLD do I miss something like this?

Voters in Ohio can be forgiven if they feel they have been beamed out of the Midwest and dropped into a third-world autocracy. The latest news from the state’s governor’s race is that the Republican nominee, Kenneth Blackwell, who is also the Ohio secretary of state, could rule that his opponent is ineligible to run because of a technicality. We’d like to think that his office would not ultimately do that, or that if it did, such a ruling would not be allowed to stand. But the mere fact that an elected official and political candidate has the authority to toss his opponent out of a race is further evidence of a serious flaw in our democracy.

In the New. York. Times.

Seriously, when did this happen, and where the hell have I been?