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Oct

19

Ohio GOP files new voter mismatch suit, Lt. Gov. wants 5 justices recused


In our last episode of partisan tampering with Ohio voters’ confidence levels, the United States Supreme Court issued a decision that shut the door on the Ohio Republican Party’s efforts at accessing literally hundreds of thousands of voter records for the purpose of preparing to challenge them on election day (also known as voter intimidation or vote suppression).

However, on the same day, this past Friday, according to the Columbus 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.

The connections to the Ohio Republican Party? Yesterday’s article in the Dispatch states that the lawsuit was filed on behalf of Myhal, “…by the same lawyers who handled the Ohio GOP case” – a case that was about the exact same issue and that the party lost on the same day in the U.S. Supreme Court (though the decision wasn’t on the merits; SCOTUS decided that the Ohio Republican Party didn’t have standing to file the case.)

And who is the complainant, David Myhal? PolitickerOH says:

David Myhal, a Republican from New Albany and fundraiser for the party, is suing Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner (D) over potential mismatches between voter registration forms and information about voters on file with government databases.

“The Republican front man on this lawsuit, David Myhal, is a prolific GOP fundraiser whose firm worked to elect four of seven of the Republican Ohio Supreme Court justices and is actively supporting the two Republican justices on the ballot this year,” Fisher said in a statement. “Justices O’Donnell, Cupp, Lundberg, Stratton and O’Connor should immediately recuse themselves from this case in light of how extensively their political campaigns benefited from the fundraising and political support of Mr. Myhal and his firm.”

Myahl is president of The 316 Group, a Republican fundraising company.

The Plain Dealer spends more time explaining Myhal’s GOP connections:

Myhal owns The 316 Group, whose clients include the Partnership for Ohio’s Future, the political arm of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. It has supported the campaigns of most of the seven justices on the all-Republican Ohio Supreme Court. The partnership is currently running television ads supporting Justices Maureen O’Connor and Evelyn Lundberg Stratton, who are up for re-election.

Brunner spokesman Jeff Ortega, addressing this newest twist, said “it is time for the Ohio Republican Party to stop injecting chaos and confusion into our excellent election system.”

Myhal’s case is independent of the party, although he acknowledges his personal and professional connections. His is the latest in a string of lawsuits over the past month questioning election directives from Brunner.

That’s why, as the PolitickerOH article tells us, Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher wants five of the seven justices to recuse themselves:

“The Republican front man on this lawsuit, David Myhal, is a prolific GOP fundraiser whose firm worked to elect four of seven of the Republican Ohio Supreme Court justices and is actively supporting the two Republican justices on the ballot this year,” Fisher said in a statement. “Justices O’Donnell, Cupp, Lundberg, Stratton and O’Connor should immediately recuse themselves from this case in light of how extensively their political campaigns benefited from the fundraising and political support of Mr. Myhal and his firm.”

Sigh. Okay – digested all that?

What’s it all mean? Why are people bothering like this, making such a fuss?  Buckeye State Blog explains the foundation for the ORP’s actions against SOS Brunner thoroughly in this post.  In pertinent part (it’s a long pertinent part but it is all relevant):

The GOP has been in an all-out blitz to do two things: 1) stem the tide of hundreds of thousands of new voters from speaking out this election day and 2) delegitimize their defeat by falsely suggesting their historic defeat was the product of fraud.  Not even Al-Qaeda could fantasize such an undermining of American democracy as the Ohio Republican Party has done in the past few weeks.  And yes, it is precisely that: legal terrorism.

The Ohio Republican Party has employed an entire public relations and legal srategy to throw the entire kitchen sink to raise any harebrained theory of “fraud” and smear against Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner they can provide.  They have falsely accused of her being partisan and not doing her job, an allegation that has been rejected numerous time by both State and federal courts by liberal, partisan “activist” judges like Ohio Supreme Court Justice Thomas Moyer, and U.S. Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, and Chief Justice John Roberts.  These courts, in almost every instance, has rejected the Ohio Republican Party’s legal theory.  In almost every instance, the courts have found that the Secretary of State was correctly applying the law.  Again, even in the few instances in which Brunner has lost, it’s been met with dissents by noted conservative jurist like Chief Justice Moyer.

The Ohio Republican Party says, on one hand, that Jennifer Brunner refuses to cross-reference the 660,000 new voter registrations with the Social Security Administration’s database and the state’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles.  For a party built on the philosophy that government is not the answer, but is the problem, the Ohio Republican Party’s new found faith in the infalliblility of government bureaucrats to maintain data is breathtaking hypocracy.  On the other hand, the ORP stresses the urgency of the moment because 200,000 voter registrations have found to be “suspect.”  What the Ohio GOP has cleverly concealed is where it came up with that number:  it’s the number of registrations that Jennifer Brunner says had data conflict with the very databases the ORP has publicly accused Brunner of refusing to check.

The real issus is that the Ohio Republicans want to know the identity of each one of those registrations so that it may make a blanket challenge to every one of them before election day, forcing any of these registrants (if they show up at the polls with identification, which again, would suggest that these aren’t “Mickey Mouse” registrations we’re talking about here) to vote by provisional ballot.  So that if the race comes down to Ohio, the Ohio GOP can have as many ballots as possible tied from the count so they can fully litigate every ballot in litigation similar to the “Chad-gate” of Florida in 2000.  If Obama wins in the electoral landslide he is predicted, or Ohio won’t affect the result, the Ohio GOP could give a rat’s ass if Mickey or Minnie Mouse voted.

And yet, Brunner, that partisan Secretary of State who has somehow gotten conservative judges in on her conspiracy to elect Barack Obama President, points out that Congress has stated in HAVA that the mere fact that there’s a conflict of data with these databases CANNOT be used as a basis to challenge the validity of any voter registration.  Why would the then-Republican Congress and President Bush sign such a law?  Because even in 2002, the Congress realized that while the cross-checking with databases provided some verification, it was an imperfect system as the quality integrity of these database is incredibly poor.  In fact, in a study, it was found that 80% of the discripencies could been written off immediately as the result off government employee error, and almost all the rest were the result of “immaterial discrepancies.” In other words, Congress had a pretty valid reason to say that the mere existence of a discrepancy from these check is insufficient to challenge a person’s registration or vote.

And yet, in the face of an adverse ruling by the United States Supreme Court, the Ohio Republican Party has already turned around to seek judicial assistance under essentially the same theory from the Ohio Supreme Court.  This over a problem so “severe” that the last Secretary of State/Republican J. Kenneth Blackwell had a novel solution to resolve it: notify only county board of elections if the other records indicated that the registrant was now deceased  and otherwise “registration errors resolve themselves during the ‘check-in’ process while voting.”  In other words, the issue that the Ohio Republican Party has spent countless legal filings and press releases blasting Brunner over is on an issue that objectively Brunner has treated more seriously than her predecessor, who’s handling of the matter was to let the poll observers on election day when the ballots are cast sort them out.  Blackwell’s solution was met with utter silence by the Ohio Republican Party.

Although the legal strategy has largely been a failure, the public relations portion of it has not thanks to a complacent media who cares more about reporting on the existence of a conflict than to provide objective reporting of the validity of the conflict.

Now imagine being a resident, voter and blogger in Ohio – fun times, eh?

So, what’s next in this latest lawsuit? From the Dispatch:

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

And election experts in Ohio believe that more suits could be filed this week.  Isn’t 24/7 access to news a wonderful thing?

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:50 pm October 19th, 2008 in Courts, Elections, Government, Law, Ohio, Politics, Republicans, Voting, WH2008 

Comments

One Response to “Ohio GOP files new voter mismatch suit, Lt. Gov. wants 5 justices recused”

  1. 1 Greg Helms on October 20th, 2008 9:52 am

    Actually, if you look at the decisions, O’Connor and Stratton have recused themselves from every case this fall involving the general election that could impact their campaigns.

    Judges Slaby (9th Dist.) and Wolff (2nd Dist.) have been sitting in their place.

    No reason to believe this will be handled any differently.

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