Originally published by: Mark Niquette and the Columbus Dispatch
October 21, 2008
The Republican fundraising consultant who brought a lawsuit against Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner in the Ohio Supreme Court over verification of new voter registrations has voluntarily dismissed his case.
David Myhal of New Albany sued Brunner last week seeking an order that Brunner direct elections boards not to process absentee ballots unless they first checked the eligibility of certain voters.
Specifically, the lawsuit wanted voters reviewed when personal information they provided when they registered did not match records in state motor-vehicle and federal Social Security records.
Ohio Republican Party Chairman Robert T. Bennett said he asked Myhal to drop the case and plans to meet tomorrow with Attorney General Nancy H. Rogers, representing Brunner, to discuss an out-of-court solution to the dispute.
“I’m hopeful that we can work together on a solution that will give Ohioans greater confidence in the integrity of this election,” Bennett said.
But although Rogers spokesman Jim Gravelle confirmed a meeting is scheduled, Brunner spokesman Jeff Ortega said it was “not a settlement meeting.”
“I am pleased that this matter has been withdrawn,” Brunner said in a statement. “Ohio boards of elections would have faced grave challenges to successfully administering orderly and fair elections had this court action been successful.
“While we do not believe the action had merit, the perils of litigation subject Ohio voters to a crisis in confidence and undue anxiety with every twist and turn of events,” Brunner said. “It is my hope that both parties will now come together to support Ohio’s bipartisan election system without further interference.”
Myhal also said he did not want to be the focus after he was criticized for filing the suit,including having Democrats call for four of the seven Supreme Court justices with ties to Myhal’s firm remove themselves from the case.
“My concern was that it was inserting a political discussion into the merits of the case because of me, and I didn’t think that that was fair to anybody, whether it be the secretary of state or the Supreme Court.”
Meanwhile, U.S. House Minority Leader John Boehner asked the U.S. Department of Justice yesterday to force Brunner to comply with federal law and check the mismatched records. The West Chester Republican’s office said the U.S. attorney general has the authority to order Brunner to enforce the law.
Boehner’s request was signed by most of the Ohio GOP congressional delegation, including central Ohio Reps. Pat Tiberi, Deborah Pryce and David L. Hobson.
The Ohio Republican Party had sued Brunner in federal court in a case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court last week regarding what Brunner was required to do with the mismatched data under the federal help America Vote Act.
A lower court had ordered Brunner to give county elections boards by last Friday a list of voters whose personal information did not match the government databases.
But the nation’s highest court overturned that order on grounds that the GOP didn’t have the standing as a private entity to sue Brunner in the case.
Brunner has estimated as many as 200,000 of the nearly 786,000 Ohioans who have registered to vote since the beginning of the year have mismatches, but that many likely are typos or legitimate discrepancies.
She also argues that the state’s bipartisan election system works well to weed out voting fraud. Republicans say if another tool to check for fraud is available through the mismatches, it should be used.
In other news, Brunner restored full operation to her Web site today after taking part of it down yesterday after what was described as “security breaches.”
Brunner’s office has not elaborated on that other than to say staff members worked through the night to “establish the needed security measures to make certain that no information on the Website could be compromised.”
Brunner also said her office has been barraged by menacing messages including death threats against Brunner and a suspicious package that was mailed to the office last week containing an”unidentified powder.”
That prompted Gov. Ted Strickland to issue a statement saying he is “deeply troubled by the news that Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner and her family have been subjected to repeated serious threats.”
“This sort of behavior simply has no place in a healthy democracy,” Strickland said. “I know we can all agree that, regardless of which party we belong to or which candidates we support,threatening our public officials or their family members with physical harm has no place in Ohio or America.”
Asked what threats there have been to Brunner’s family, Ortega said, “There have been a barrage of phone calls and e-mails for a period of weeks into this office, some of which have contained threatening messages. The nature of the calls and messages are usually somewhat irrational and, at times, target the secretary or others associated with her.”
The State Highway Patrol confirmed it is investigating the security breach and the threats but as of today had only two public reports. One was for a threatening telephone call reported by a female employee last Friday and the other for a threatening letter addressed to Brunner containing the unknown substance.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2008/10/21/dismissed.html