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Oct
29
I really can’t say it any better than Jeff Coryell of Ohio Daily Blog:
In short, the Ohio Republican Party’s hysterical flailing at [Secretary of State] Brunner for “concealing evidence” and “facilitating voter fraud” is pernicious nonsense and little more than a smokescreen for voter suppression.
Backing up just a bit, readers may recall that we’re talking about concerns related to so-called voter mismatches that exist within a subset of Ohio voters who have registered since January 2008. The Ohio Republican Party wanted to force Brunner to provide information on the possible mismatches of up to 200,000 voters so that the ORP could then challenge those voters if and when they show up to vote, purportedly to stop voting fraud.
The main problem has been, all along, that an extremely high percentage of the mismatches, up to and maybe beyond 80%, are due to human error and not any reason that would otherwise disqualify a voter from voting. Thus, the real danger was voter suppression and disenfranchisement by the ORP’s overly aggressive and basically baseless fears.
From the New York Times’ blog, The Caucus:
The Department of Justice will not require Ohio to disclose the names of voters whose registration applications did not match other government databases, according to two people familiar with discussions between state and federal lawyers.
The decision comes about a week after an unusual request from President Bush asking the department to investigate the matter and roughly two weeks after the Supreme Court dismissed a case involving the flagged registration applications.
Federal law requires states to verify voter registration applications with a government database like those used for driver’s licenses or Social Security cards. Names that do not match are flagged for further verification. But the law provides little guidance on how these flagged registrations should be handled and discrepancies corrected.
As an Ohio voter, I particularly appreciate the Times pointing out the role Bush and the Ohio GOP have had in this series of events:
Ohio Republicans had sought the lists to challenge voters, but the Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, refused the request, saying that numerical errors or misspellings are the probable reason for most of the discrepancies. Forcing these voters to cast provisional ballots would possibly disenfranchise thousands of eligible voters, she said, since these ballots are easier to disqualify.
Republicans then took their request to court, but were unsuccessful. The Justice Department has been in contact with Ohio election officials since early October and this week its lawyers determined they would not pursue litigation before the election, according to the sources familiar with the discussions.
Most studies by non-partisan groups have found little evidence that voter fraud is a wide-scale problem or that fraudulent or duplicate voter registration applications lead to ineligible voters casting ballots.
As a taxpayer, what is so annoying is that, again, the GOP claims to want smaller goverment and give business all kinds of latitude, but when it comes to them wanting to get their way, especially when they aren’t in charge, look how much time, money and effort – not to mention the intangible cost on voter confidence – they are willing to expend.
From a partisan strategy, I get it – but I still think it’s wrong.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:17 pm October 29th, 2008 in Elections, Jennifer Brunner, Ohio, Politics, Republicans, Voting, WH2008
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Sadly, I heard that the ruling you mention was again overturned and the GOP has leaned on enough judges to get their way – yeah, they are soooo interested in counting all the votes, if they think they are for their own party, that is, and in disenfranchising anyone who might be a poor, minority or other non-GOP looking or sounding voter. After Senator Obama’s positive message last night, we are back to nasty GOP reality.