Liberty Maven

FRANKFORT, Ky. — Republican Rand Paul doesn’t want his chief opponent in Kentucky’s U.S. Senate race to oversee the vote count in the May primary election.

Paul, son of former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul of Texas, is running against the man who oversees elections in Kentucky, Secretary of State Trey Grayson. In a letter sent to Grayson’s Capitol office earlier this week, Paul asked Grayson to recuse himself from overseeing the Senate election.

“I really feel like if you’re in the election, you shouldn’t count the votes,” Paul told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “I think he shouldn’t have access to any computers counting or tabulating the votes.”

The Grayson camp, for now, is determined not to comply with Paul’s request.

Grayson spokesman Les Fugate called the request absurd. Fugate said Grayson won’t recuse himself.

“It is an insult to the judgment of Kentuckians that Mr. Paul suggest Secretary Grayson stop doing the job that they elected him to do,” Fugate said. “Secretary Grayson is a national leader in elections reform who has received broad, bipartisan support for his commonsense ideas that make our elections more secure, more accessible, and more honest. This political request is absurd and blatantly self-serving.“

Sure, Kentuckians elected Grayson to do this job, but I’m not sure they elected him to oversee his own election. This is the political equivalent of allowing Coach John Calipari to referee Kentucky Wildcat basketball games. Also, it’s difficult for me to swallow the “self-serving” charge. Les Fugate is trying to deflect a charge that could much more easily be made against Trey Grayson rather than Rand Paul.

Having Grayson oversee the election could also be compared to the Democrats health reform proposal. They claim there will be competition between the government and the private sector. Fair competition is not possible when one entity controls the game.

When one side has the ability to “cheat”, whether they do so or not, the final results will always be tainted. If Grayson can’t see this as a legitimate conflict of interest then he isn’t smart enough to be the next Senator from Kentucky.