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GOP Loses Ohio Voter Challenge

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Los Angeles Times

Published: October 18, 2008

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday threw out a lawsuit brought by the Ohio Republican Party that could have made it easier to challenge tens of thousands of newly registered voters.

The Supreme Court, in a brief opinion, said the federal law that called for computer checks of new voters did not authorize private lawsuits to enforce it.

The ruling is a victory for Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat. She said she feared "chaos" on Election Day if the GOP were permitted last-minute challenges to new voters based on data on file with the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

Ohio, always a closely contested state, has seen more than 600,000 new registered voters this year. Brunner said she feared that as many as 200,000 of them could be challenged and forced to file provisional ballots if there were a mismatch between the information on their voter registration cards and the data on file with the DMV.

One example came to light this week. Joseph Wurzelbacher, or "Joe the Plumber," became a celebrated figure in the third debate between John McCain and Barack Obama. Several Ohio newspapers said his name is misspelled as "Worzelbacher" in the state's records. That mismatch could have led to his being challenged at the polls if he had been a newly registered voter.

The state GOP sued Brunner last month and asserted that her office had not complied with the federal Help America Vote Act. It says the state election chief must set up a computerized system that allows checking new voters with state DMV records.

Brunner said Ohio had complied with that requirement, but the GOP lawsuit said her office should print out a list of "mismatches" for all 88 counties in Ohio.

Brunner replied that it would be troublesome to reprogram the state's computers at this late stage. A federal judge, however, ordered her to make the change, and the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati upheld the order.

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