Exclusive: Ohio Secretary Of State Will Fight Republican Challenge
Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner told the Huffington Post on Thursday that she is ready not only to fight the state's current election law battle in front of the Supreme Court, but is also willing to wage a new fight, if necessary, to make sure hundreds of thousands of new voters are not "forced" onto provisional ballots on election day.
Spurred by revelations that the community organizing group ACORN has submitted many thousands of ineligible voter registration cards in battleground states, Ohio Republicans have been calling for a wholesale comparison of the state's nearly 666,000 new active voters against data collected by the local DMV.
Brunner charged that Republican demands are meant to create confusion at the polls and keep all the ballots from being counted.
Brunner says that, according to the League of Women Voters, there were only four instances of "illegal voting," or the actual casting of an illegitimate ballot, between 2002 and 2006 -- when just under 8 million ballots were cast. As such, she said, ACORN's registration problems are being improperly lumped in with the casting of bad ballots, something she says is not likely to occur no matter how many fraudulent registrations are turned in. "Unfortunately, despite the messaging of certain political parties ... when they bring ACORN into it, they're talking about false voter registration. Seldom does that lead to illegal voting. Mickey Mouse and Jive Turkey don't vote."
Brunner revealed this week that state data for approximately 200,000 of the new voters shows at least one discrepancy out of nearly two dozen categories that can be compared between the Secretary of State's office and the DMV.
(Indeed, even Ohio's Joe 'The Plumber' Wurzelbacher appears on voter registration rolls with a slight name misspelling, and thus would be subject to what a representative of the Brennan Center for Justice calls "disenfranchisement by typo.")
Though both Brunner and her Republican opponents concede that many of these 200,000 "flags" could be due to administrative error, the state GOP nevertheless wants her to provide the state's 88 separate boards of election with their respective shares of the flagged voters. On Tuesday, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Ohio Republicans, and gave Brunner until Friday, October 17 to draw up the various lists.
On Wednesday night, Brunner appealed the 6th Circuit's decision to the Supreme Court, which she said is now awaiting a response brief from her Republican opponents. "The best information I have is that it's likely the Republican party would be given a deadline to file a brief today," Brunner said. "And then we'll see what the court does. We have been attempting to comply with a federal judge's order. But the action was brought so late."
Spurred by revelations that the community organizing group ACORN has submitted many thousands of ineligible voter registration cards in battleground states, Ohio Republicans have been calling for a wholesale comparison of the state's nearly 666,000 new active voters against data collected by the local DMV.
Brunner charged that Republican demands are meant to create confusion at the polls and keep all the ballots from being counted.
Brunner says that, according to the League of Women Voters, there were only four instances of "illegal voting," or the actual casting of an illegitimate ballot, between 2002 and 2006 -- when just under 8 million ballots were cast. As such, she said, ACORN's registration problems are being improperly lumped in with the casting of bad ballots, something she says is not likely to occur no matter how many fraudulent registrations are turned in. "Unfortunately, despite the messaging of certain political parties ... when they bring ACORN into it, they're talking about false voter registration. Seldom does that lead to illegal voting. Mickey Mouse and Jive Turkey don't vote."
Brunner revealed this week that state data for approximately 200,000 of the new voters shows at least one discrepancy out of nearly two dozen categories that can be compared between the Secretary of State's office and the DMV.
(Indeed, even Ohio's Joe 'The Plumber' Wurzelbacher appears on voter registration rolls with a slight name misspelling, and thus would be subject to what a representative of the Brennan Center for Justice calls "disenfranchisement by typo.")
Though both Brunner and her Republican opponents concede that many of these 200,000 "flags" could be due to administrative error, the state GOP nevertheless wants her to provide the state's 88 separate boards of election with their respective shares of the flagged voters. On Tuesday, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Ohio Republicans, and gave Brunner until Friday, October 17 to draw up the various lists.
On Wednesday night, Brunner appealed the 6th Circuit's decision to the Supreme Court, which she said is now awaiting a response brief from her Republican opponents. "The best information I have is that it's likely the Republican party would be given a deadline to file a brief today," Brunner said. "And then we'll see what the court does. We have been attempting to comply with a federal judge's order. But the action was brought so late."
posted by Kangaroo Brisbane Australia at 3:25 PM
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