Jesse Jackson is at it again. The master of eloquent mendacity recently picked up a bundle of misunderstandings, fiction and bunk and compared Ohio's election on Nov. 2 to that of Ukraine's. Jackson doesn't bother with facts when half-baked suppositions better fit his partisan agenda.
If Jackson was not aiming to delegitimize a democratic process, I'd suggest laughing off the charges. But his are serious. As a former United States ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission and a two-term Ohio secretary of state, I will substitute facts for some of the wild speculation Jackson traffics in.

Ohio has an election system that is transparent, bipartisan and fair. I'd like to take credit for it, but the fact is that parts of it -- like the rules concerning provisional ballots -- have been in place since the mid-1990s. Other key elements, like the bipartisan boards of elections, have been around much longer than that. I did not wave the system into existence just for this past election.

Ohio's election system both makes sure that citizens have every chance to make their views heard on election days and provides checks against possible fraud.

The system's watchdogs are representatives of the major political parties.

Who has a greater incentive to guarantee that the other side isn't rigging the system? Each county has a four-member board of elections -- two Democrats and two Republicans. They make the decisions about the placement of voting machines. They certify elections. They choose voting devices and deploy those systems on election days.

Democratic county party chairmen like Franklin County's (Columbus) William A. Anthony Jr. serve on boards of elections. They are not in the business of trying to suppress their party's vote. Nonetheless, Jackson rather bizarrely insinuated that Anthony deliberately agreed to place too few voting machines in heavily Democratic neighborhoods and too many in Republican ones. "Why would I sit there and disenfranchise voters in my own community?'' Anthony recently told the Columbus Dispatch. Jackson has no answer. He just fans the flames with even more flat out false information.

Jackson claims that he has identified fraud in Ohio because "Ellen Connally, an African-American Supreme Court candidate running an underfunded race at the bottom of the ticket, received over 100,000 more votes than (John) Kerry in four counties.''

However, a quick check of those four counties -- Butler, Clermont, Hamilton and Warren -- reveals a different reality. Kerry actually received 21,019 more combined votes in those counties than Connally.

The truth is that Ohio's election officials -- Democrats and Republicans -- are in the business of seeing to it that the vote is counted fairly. This is a long process, one that is best not hurried.

Election workers in Hamilton County have been putting in 18-hour days, checking each of the 13,976 provisional ballots by hand against voter registration lists. It is the same process in the other 87 counties.

Across Ohio, 77 percent of the provisional ballots were accepted and counted in the final tally by county boards of election. Most commonly, ballots were rejected because voters weren't registered. A few voters voted twice. A small number were rejected because voters cast their ballots at the wrong precinct.

Contrast Ohio's 77 percent acceptance rate with the 50 percent in Jackson's home, Cook County, Illinois. Why not cry about voter suppression and malfeasance there?

The vast majority of Ohioans knew where to cast their votes. I believed that with an electorate that had grown by 22 percent, a massive education campaign could dispel any lingering confusion about where and how to vote. We used radio and television ads. Cards mailed to registered voters reminded them of their precinct and voting location. Using a sophisticated computer system, we called voters with a recorded message that was another reminder of their precinct and voting place.

The phone messages, by the way, targeted urban areas -- the same areas that were the focus, we now hear, of alleged Republican drive-down-the-vote efforts.

Leaders need to tell the truth and be responsible. Leaders don't peddle fairy stories to win applause from disappointed partisans. Sen. Kerry and Anthony are leaders. Jackson props up delusions.

Ohio is not Kiev. It is not even Cook County, home of fabled rough and tumble elections, where even the dead took such an interest in politics that they couldn't stay away from the polls.

No, Ohio's system of elections is not perfect. But it does provide transparency and safeguards against fraud through bipartisan oversight and administration. I look forward to working to improve it with those who have constructive proposals. We won't be helped by self-appointed spokesmen for democracy who denigrate the democratic process in Ohio -- and the efforts of the tens of thousands of Ohioans of both political parties who make it work.

J. Kenneth Blackwell is Ohio's secretary of state.