Tim Russo writes:

The legal reason? In 2004, the GOP let this entire strategy rest on their precinct challengers, at the polling place level. The challengers were permitted by law to challenge a voter”s registration, get the precinct official to question it, and thus get the voter to vote provisional. In 2008, precinct challengers are no longer permitted. So no one in the precinct representing the GOP can challenge registrations on November 4. That”s the legal reason for making this a pre-election day tampering effort.

The operational reason? This effort collapsed on election day, largely because the GOP had a hard time deploying an organization of people with the onions to stand between a black man and his vote in Democratic precincts. I ran into so few of them on election day in 2004, seeing just one GOP challenger was news, and even those eventually gave up, because not a single person in a black precinct in Cleveland wanted them there. That”s a little hard for a squiddly little douchebag goober from Bay Village to endure. And if they couldn”t do it in 2004, they sure as hell can”t mount even that level of organization in 2008.

So in 2008, the GOP is trying to gum up this process from above, rather than at the grassroots. They can”t do it at the precinct level legally, or organizationally. They are trying to get courts to do what they themselves are incapable of doing on election day. Cowards have a funny way of getting other people to do their dirty work.

So how do we combat this? One way is micro, the other is macro.

The micro strategy? The goal at the precinct level should be to make sure as few voters as possible are forced to vote provisional. We can still battle this in the precinct, even though challengers are not permitted, with media, bloggers keeping an eye on the process, and well trained Democratic precinct workers. I”m sure the ODP is coming up with other strategies as well, like voter education to ensure that new voters are prepared to show ID, battle to get a real ballot, not a provisional, and stand firm.

The macro strategy?

Turnout.

The number of provisionals in Ohio will almost certainly be larger than in 2004. It”s both a function of the number of new registers, and the GOP”s pre-election efforts in the courts. For these provisionals to matter in the least, Ohio”s margin needs to be narrow.

So we need to make that margin as big as possible. We need to get so many voters to the polls, turnout so many black votes in black precincts, that Ohio is called for Barack early in the evening, and the final margin among normally cast ballots is so large, that provisionally cast ballots are irrelevant. Case. Closed.

In short, we can destroy their efforts at tampering with democracy, with democracy itself.