Just up on The New Republic's site is an article shadowing Ohio SoS Jennifer Brunner as she prepares for tomorrow's elections. Much of it is familiar to Ohioans -- chaos in 2004, Republican attacks on her neutrality, howling fantods about database mismatches. As the article notes, Brunner is now lining up her bucket brigade to douset any fires that flare tomorrow. A taste:
- On the floor below Brunner's office, dozens of staffers in the Elections Division are recovering from months of GOP blasts while, at the same time, bracing themselves for Tuesday's swarms of voters and the hiccups or disasters they might bring. "We're preparing for the worst, and hoping for the best," says field leader Katherine Thomsen, who will coordinate polling site checks and conference calls on Tuesday to keep the secretary of state's office in the loop about what's happening on the ground.
One wing of the floor houses a "phalanx of lawyers," in one staffer's words, ready to handle any legal problems, while another is staffed by campaign finance officers still answering phone calls about possible problems with candidates' yard signs. Piles of filing boxes stuffed with election documents stretch down one wall in the floor's central hub, past cubicles where "paper jockeys" are busy with faxes and e-mails from local precincts.
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