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October 18, 2008

GOP Files new lawsuit against Brunner in Ohio

Rick Moran
Rebuffed by the Supreme Court due to their lack of standing under the Help America Vote law, Republicans have now filed another lawsuit against Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner in order to stop her plan to dump 200,000 suspect voter registrations into the election in a little more than 2 weeks.

From the Columbis Dispatch:

David Myhal, a Republican from New Albany, filed a lawsuit this afternoon asking the state's highest court to issue an order related to instances when new voter information doesn't match records in state or federal databases.

Specifically, the lawsuit asks the Ohio Supreme Court to require Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner to order county elections boards not to count any absentee ballot from voters registered after Jan. 1 without first checking the statewide voter registration database to ensure there is no mismatch.

If there is a mismatch, the boards would be required to determine whether the person is an eligible voter.

"This action seeks this (Ohio Supreme Court's) urgent intervention to remedy the secretary of state's steadfast refusal to fully implement the Statewide Voter Registration Database (SWVRD) in a manner required by both federal and state law -- in essence, to share 'mismatch' information regarding a registrant's driver's license or Social Security information with county boards of elections in a manner that gives those boards a meaningful opportunity to investigate the mismatches," the lawsuit says.

The court ordered that arguments by both sides must be filed by next Friday, only 10 days before the Nov. 4 election.

The problem here is time - something the Ohio high court will no doubt be forced to reckon with. If, instead of fighting the ruling that would have required her to do the checks necessary on these voter registrations to maintain the integrity of the vote, she began the process, then there is a good chance her office would have been able to complete the task before election day.

But with arguments coming next Friday - a bare 2 weeks until election day - the chances are pretty good that the court will agree with Brunner that there is insufficient time to carry out the task she should have done in the first place and allow the vote to go forward without the checks on those mis-matched registrations.

The only hope now is that Ohio will not be close enough for those votes to matter. Given recent polls, that is probably a pipe dream.

Posted at 12:25 PM | Email | | | Share Share
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