ELECTION SECTION

• Election 2004 page

He will also host rallies in Dayton and Lima later Sunday. On Monday, he will attend a United Auto Workers rally in Toledo.

Meanwhile, Vice President Dick Cheney will host a town-hall meeting late Monday afternoon in Wilmington.

Wednesday, President Bush will lead rallies at Youngstown and Lima. Even though he'll spend that night in Michigan, he'll return Thursday for rallies in Dayton and Cleveland.

Justice weighs in

Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell was touting a friend-of-the-court brief from the U.S. Justice Department Friday as vindication of his provisional voting policy.

Blackwell has appealed to the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals a Toledo judge's ruling that otherwise-qualified voters may cast a walk-in ballot at any precinct in the county in which they reside.

Justice Department lawyers say that they alone, and not private lawyers for the Democratic Party, have the authority to enforce the 2002 Help America Vote Act. And Justice says Blackwell is well within his rights to require voters to show up at the correct precinct.

Mercer-nary

In a speculative article on possible Bush Cabinet picks for a second term, the Washington Post suggested Indian Hill's Mercer Reynolds, Bush's chief fund-raiser, could be a candidate for Commerce secretary.

Reynolds already served as ambassador to Switzerland for Bush, before taking over Bush's re-election fund-raising.

In Cincinnati on Thursday, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card declined to speculate on a second-term shake-up.

"I don't think the president should be burdened with an expectation from anyone who works for him now that they should be part of that team," he told the Enquirer.

That's no Jive

Cuyahoga County election officials are investigating more than a thousand possible fraudulent voter registrations - including one for Jive Turkey Sr.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported Friday that the name is one in a string of fake names on new voter rolls. Others include Dick Tracy, Mary Poppins and Michael Jordan in Defiance County.

Muslims for Kerry

A day after an umbrella group of the nation's largest Muslim organizations endorsed Sen. John Kerry, another Muslim group released a poll showing 80 percent of American Muslims say they will vote for Kerry, with only 2 percent supporting President Bush. Ralph Nader, who is of Lebanese ancestry, got 11 percent.

The poll of 857 American Muslims was conducted via fax and e-mail after the final debate.

"Muslims may be swing voters in politically important states, such as Ohio and Florida," said the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which released the poll. The group is opening "Get Out the Muslim Vote" election centers this weekend in Ohio.

What's a collywobble?

Last week, Britain's Guardian newspaper launched a campaign in which Brits could send letters to undecided Ohio voters in Clark County, between Columbus and Dayton.

But while the program was a great success on that side of the Atlantic - 14,000 people sent letters - it was, to say the least, resented in Ohio. Some of the correspondence the Guardian got in return from the United States was, the paper said, "eye-wateringly unpleasant."

"Go back to sipping your tea and leave our people alone," was one of the politer responses from Ohio.

As of Thursday, Operation Clark County was canceled. One of the lessons: "Parts of America have become so isolationist that even the idea of individuals receiving letters from foreigners is enough to give politicians the collywobbles."

For more on the story, go to: www.guardian.co.uk/clarkcounty

Campaign calendar

• Get-out-the-vote breakfast with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Integrity Hall, Bond Hill, 10 a.m. today

• John Edwards arrives in Cincinnati on the eve of a bus tour through western Ohio Sunday.

Carl Weiser and Gregory Korte of the Enquirer