Jon Huston: The Sequel to J. Kenneth Blackwell?

Secretary of State Jon Husted won't be on the November ballot as a candidate.  But his game-changing presence could be felt on the Election Day vote returns.  In ruling against extending a three-day extension for early voters in Cuyahoga County to break a deadlock on the  Board of Elections,  Husted has cast his lot with the GOP controlled General Assembly law that is palapably aimed at minorities,  a majority of whom would likely support Democrats.   Republican officials won't say that. We just did.

For Republican Husted, who obviously has stars in eyes for higher office, he is in no mood to rock the boat among his political friends  in a year when the party is active across the land to shear the minority vote.  But in Ohio it is also a dreadful reminder of  another  Republican's  jerrybuilt  management of the 2004  presidential election in the state.

We go back to J. Kenneth Blackwell, not only the secretary of state but also President Bush's co-chairman of his  Ohio campaign. To dismiss  any thought that  Blackwell was striving to keep his thumb on the scale for Bush would deny the presence of Asian carp in Lake Erie.

From  overcrowded voting precincts to all sorts of confusing challenges to voter eligibility, Blackwell rose  to new heights in Bush's election apparatus.

Purely as an aside to Husted:   he might recall  that when Blackwell decided to run for governor on his laurels in 2006,  he was thrashed 60-37 by Democrat Ted Strickland.    Voters often have a way of remembering,  even when politicians try not to.

No county will be impacted more than Cuyahoga,  where Democratic officials, organized labor and some clergy  are outraged by the GOP's handiwork.   "It's Republicans' dirty little secret," declared county Democratic  Party Chairman Stuart Garson. "What they are saying is, 'We don't want you people voting'."

Nick Martin, the party's executive director,  refers to figures that show nearly 50 pct. of the early voters are African-Americans. (50.9 pct. when linked to Hispanics).  The number who could be short-changed  could turn an election around across the state. Another batch of figures shows 1.7 million Ohioans voted early in 2008 - a full one third of the total who cast ballots.

The Obama campaign has filed suit in Federal court in Columbus to extend early voting days.

We can hope.

Stuart Garson: A new job overseeing an old problem.

STUART GARSON'S new political task in Cleveland is a calculated burden by an optimistic man. "I have a good sense of humor," the new Cuyahoga County Democratic chairman told me on the phone the other day while laying out his vision of returning the corruption-decimated party to its once-overpowering role in state and national politics.

Holy Garofoli! Here is a successful 61-year-old trial lawyer who has just succeeded Jimmy Dimora, the party boss who resigned under the ongoing suspicions that he is corrupt. And Garson has now agreed to the unthinkable: Bringing order to chaos.

Garson is well aware of the Democrats' (read: county's) plunge in recent years, not the least of which is a two-year federal investigation into alleged corruption by County Commissioner Dimora, Auditor Frank Russo and all sorts of bribers and bribees ranging through the political, business and intersecting familial universe along Lake Erie.

"Yes," he concedes, "we're battered." But he sees the problem as systemic: heavy baggage that has created an image of a Cleveland that is a malfunctioning incorrigible never more than moments away from vanishing in that lake. (In the past, when I've written things like this, somebody always stands up to yelp without saying why this is an inapt description. And that was long before LeBron left town.)

For one thing, Garson says, the exodus of young people from the city has taken its toll on the city's health - social, enconomic and political. In a few minutes, he is beginning to sound more like a sociologist than a politician. "We've got to turn around this loss of our young people and find ways to keep them here."

But he finds hope in the new charter government that will soon be in place - ridding the county of several major offices (fixtures! ) and assigning the governance to an executive and county council. Or as he puts it: "New management authority on steroids."

Well, a lot of people, namely the Democrats in this state, are hoping that somehow true change is on the way. To support his optimism, Garson will have to have to find the wit and muscle to prevent the boulder from rolling back down the hill.

(P.S. For those in the dark, Tony Garofoli was once a co- chairman of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party.)