Brunner Won’t Need to Change Voter Lists
Originally published by: Mark Niquette and the Columbus Dispatch
October 11, 2008
A federal appeals court ruled 2-1 last night in favor of Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner to put on hold an order sought by the Ohio Republican Party involving information about newly registered voters and concerns about potential fraud.
The three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Brunner is not required to provide county elections boards with the names of voters whose personal information did not match motor-vehicle or Social Security records, as ordered Thursday by District Court Judge George C. Smith of Columbus.
The state does the computer matching, but counties can get details about any mismatches only by accessing individual voter records one by one. Republicans argued that counties should get a complete list of those whose information did not match as a way to help catch any fraud, and Smith agreed.
But Brunner argued that the law doesn’t require matching to determine voter eligibility, that it would take days to produce such a list, and that making changes this close to the Nov. 4 election could create major problems.
The panel agreed, noting that the process of matching voter information has been in place since 2007 but that the GOP waited until recently to challenge it.
“(The party) itself created the sudden rush for determination, and we are not prepared to reward it for forcing all parties into this unenviable position,” the court wrote.
Representatives of the Republican Party could not be reached last night.
Brunner, a first-term Democrat, said the ruling “halted another partisan lawsuit in Ohio,” but she added that Ohio has “multilayered, bipartisan systems in place to process and verify every new voter registration. Ohioans and the nation can be confident in our elections system.”
Judge Richard Allen Griffin dissented, saying the three-judge panel should not have acted so quickly and that Brunner’s “lack of concern for the integrity of the elections process is astounding and deeply disturbing.”
The ruling came as Republicans have been ratcheting up the rhetoric about alleged voter fraud in Ohio, with John McCain facing the prospect of losing the presidency if he doesn’t carry Ohio.
The GOP complaints reached the highest levels of the McCain team yesterday, with national campaign manager Rick Davis raising “a serious question” about how Brunner is administering the election in the state.
The campaign also launched an online ad slamming Democrat Barack Obama and his ties to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, a group active in signing up voters in Ohio and other key battleground states.
Most of the GOP complaints have focused on allegations of voter-registration fraud and assertions that groups such as ACORN are peppering registration rolls with phony voters, which ACORN denies.
Democrats and others also say that instances of actual voter fraud using phony registrations are rare.
Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien said yesterday that he is investigating two complaints. One involves a woman from Colorado who called to say local relatives associated with ACORN were registering and voting improperly; the other centers on an Ohio State University student who reportedly registered with a phony name and cast a ballot.
Republicans also have cast doubt on the legality of “Golden Week,” an overlap between the start of early absentee voting on Sept. 30 and last Monday’s registration deadline, during which Ohioans could register and immediately cast an absentee ballot. But the GOP-controlled Ohio Supreme Court backed Brunner’s ruling that state law allowed both.
In a conference call yesterday with reporters nationwide, Davis argued that Brunner’s decisions plus her advice to counties not to allow observers of in-person absentee votes are “dumbfounding.”
“Brunner has single-handedly, I think, mangled the election laws in Ohio in a way that is incredible,” Davis said.
Brunner did not respond to a request for comment left with her spokesman, but she previously has defended her decisions as mostly upholding what the Republican-controlled legislature passed in updates to state election laws.
In response to the attacks from Republicans, Democrats fought back yesterday with criticism of what they called GOP “voter suppression.”
It was directed mostly at Greene County Sheriff Gene Fischer, who caused a stir Thursday by asking the local elections board for records of all 302 people who registered and voted during “Golden Week.”
Fischer canceled his request yesterday after Democrats said he was acting without evidence as part of an “ugly partisan fishing expedition of unprecedented proportions.”
But Tom Miller, deputy Greene County prosecutor, has said Fischer might renew his request if the court overturned Smith’s decision.
Link to article: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2008/10/11/ACORN_FRAUD_2.ART_ART_10-11-08_A1_8TBIUME.html