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Oct

20

OH SOS Brunner successfully gets latest GOP lawsuit sent to Fed court


The fun never ends.  I wrote about the latest voter mismatch suit here (it was filed Friday by an individual but an individual who is a GOP fundraiser and has ties to five of the seven Ohio Supreme Court justices).

Today, the Plain Dealer reports that a request from the Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, to move the case from the Ohio Supreme Court to federal court, because of HAVA being a federal law and the underlying issue of the case, has been granted.

[The Ohio] Attorney general’s office spokesman Jim Gravelle said [Ohio AG Nancy] Rogers exercised her right to have the case moved to another court and that it has already been assigned to U.S. District Court Judge George C. Smith.

“From this office’s standpoint, the Ohio Supreme Court case no longer exists,” said Gravelle.

But the state court just minutes ago issued a revised schedule for the Myhal case, still requiring Brunner to respond to the case by the end of today and moving up the request for briefs and evidence from Friday to Wednesday.

And Judge Smith’s law clerk, Stephanie Rawlings, said it is possible that the judge could determine that removal was improper and send the case back to the Ohio Supreme Court. It appears Brunner is not anticipating responding to the Supreme Court. Rawlings said Smith could have a decision today on whether he will accept the case.

Smith, who was appointed to the bench under President Ronald Reagan, is the same judge who took the case two weeks ago when it was originally filed by the Ohio Republican Party. He sided with the Republicans then and issued a temporary restraining order against Brunner. That order was dismissed Friday by the U.S. Supreme Court.

More as it develops, in addition to new calls by the Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, Senator Sherrod Brown and Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman for the McCain campaign to stop the robocall smears that others such as Republican Senators Norm Coleman (MN) and Susan Collins (ME) have asked to have stopped.

FYI: John McCain, appearing with Chris Wallace yesterday, said that he will not be stopping the calls [emphasis mine]:

WALLACE:…But Senator, back — if I may, back in 2000 when you were the target of robo calls, you called these hate calls and you said…

MCCAIN: They worked.

WALLACE: … and you said the following, “I promise you, I have never and will never have anything to do with that kind of political tactic.”

Now you’ve hired the same guy who did the robo calls against you to — reportedly, to do the robo calls against Obama and the Republican Senator Susan Collins, the co-chair of your campaign in Maine, has asked you to stop the robo calls. Will you do that?

MCCAIN: Of course not. These are legitimate and truthful, and they are far different than the phone calls that were made about my family and about certain aspects that — things that this is — this is dramatically different, and either you haven’t — didn’t see those things in 2000…

WALLACE: No, I saw them.

MCCAIN: … or you don’t know the difference between that and what is a legitimate issue, and that is Senator Obama being truthful with the American people.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 1:41 pm October 20th, 2008 in Cleveland+, Education, Gambling, Humor, Nancy Rogers, Research, Rosemary Palmer, WH2008, Women 

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