Ken Blackwell is Ohio’s Secretary of State, and so is responsible for overseeing the state’s election results and issuing rules governing the voter registration process. That he is also the Republican candidate for governor has his opponent, Ted Strickland, calling for Blackwell to step aside and let the state’s Republican Attorney General or a Franklin County common pleas judge oversee the election. Blackwell has no intention of doing so.

Last week a New York Times editorial provided a rundown of Blackwell’s election law history, which includes an “almost certainly illegal” order that county boards of elections reject voter registrations completed on a certain kind of paper. Moreover, Blackwell’s staff narrowed the list of companies eligible to replace Ohio’s antiquated voting equipment with more modern technology; among the companies that made the cut was Diebold, in which Blackwell later confessed to unwittingly owning stock. Now, with Blackwell responsible for enforcing new (and, says the Times, draconian) state legislation on voter registration, the conflict of interest, yet again, is obvious.

In response, Blackwell Blog resorts to accusing Strickland and running mate Lee Fisher of trying to “erode Ken Blackwell’s support from minority communities,” and the Times of regurgitating long-debunked conspiracy theories of the 2004 election. And as for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s recent Rolling Stone piece, well, according to the Blackwell camp, Robert’s uncle “may very well have won the 1960 presidential election because of voter fraud.”