Guest blogged by Steven Rosenfeld of AlterNet
Republican Party efforts to stop thousands of voters from casting meaningful ballots in 2008 because their registration information does not match government databases with high error rates was set back by legal rulings in Wisconsin, Ohio and Nevada on Thursday.
In Wisconsin, a judge threw out a lawsuit by the state Attorney General, who also is the McCain campaign co-chair. In Ohio and Nevada, each state’s top election official issued an order or opinion rejecting such ‘no-match’ voter challenges.
While Republican officials criticized these moves, it appears that momentum is building against GOP efforts to use ambiguities in voter registration laws to challenge large numbers of 2008 voters…
The federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 instructs states to use Social Security and driver’s license databases to verify registrations, but leaves it up to states to decide how to specifically do that.
That ambiguity has been the backdrop of the GOP’s assertions that states must segregate problem voter registrations, treating them as a separate class of ballots. But, so far, most state and federal courts have rejected the Republican’s legal arguments…
Wisconsin
In Wisconsin, Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi ruled that Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, a Republican and McCain-Palin campaign co-chair, did not have the legal authority to bring a suit demanding the state’s election board re-certify thousands of registrations before Election Day if they did not match other government databases.
Sumi said no violation of state or federal law was poised to occur. Instead, she said the proper way for the no-match issue to be handled was to go through established state law – where the matter would have been taken up by the very state board that Van Hollen sued, Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board.
Van Hollen issued a statement saying he would appeal.
“We can not lose sight of the goal of this lawsuit,” he said. “Wisconsin needs an accurate statewide voter list. Wisconsin needs to comply with state and federal laws designed to protect the right to vote. Looking the other way is not an option.”
Ohio
In Ohio, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat and former judge, Thursday issued a directive telling local election officials that they cannot stop a person from voting on Nov. 4 if their individual voter registration did not match these two government databases.
Brunner’s directive, which has the force of law, comes after Ohio Republicans lost on this issue in a case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court, and also withdrew a similar lawsuit at the state Supreme Court.
Brunner instructed Ohio’s 88 county election boards to reject any voter challenges based on database mismatches. In September, she issued another directive narrowing the circumstances under which a political party could challenge voters at their polling places. Brunner has said she wants to see as many voters as possible vote without incident on Election Day.
Brunner’s order explained why the no-match standard could disenfranchise legal voters.
The Ohio secretary said there was no requirement in Ohio law that forced election officials to give voters with “no-match” problems a provisional ballot, which would have be verified before counting. The Ohio Republican Party’s suit before the state Supreme Court sought that remedy. “A copy of this directive must be included in the poll worker packets distributed to all poll workers,” her order said.
The Ohio Republican Party responded to Brunner’s directive by belittling her election administration efforts.
“This is the same mismatch information Brunner has so far failed to provide to county election administrators,” said Ohio Republican Party Deputy Chairman Kevin DeWine, in a press release. “At this point she’s telling elections officials what to do with information she hasn’t even provided them. Until she releases the 200,000 questionable registrations on file in her office, this directive is worthless.”
Nevada
In Nevada, Secretary of State Ross Miller has rejected an assertion by the state’s Republican Party Chair Sue Lowden that voters should not be able to correct voter registration information at polling places. She argued in a letter to Miller that the close of voter registration before Election Day precluded that option, saying affected voters should be given provisional ballots.
Miller’s response rejected Lowden’s contention, saying “Nevada law provides the manner in which an in-person and mail-in applicant may update or correct the voter information, and may do so without losing his right to vote.”
While the developments in Wisconsin, Ohio and Nevada may bode well for accommodating voters in a high-turnout election, the fights concerning whose votes will count on Election Day are far from over.
Other States
On the database matching issue, the Pennsylvania Republican Party has also filed a suit seeking to have ‘no-match’ registrations treated differently. And in New Mexico, another swing state, the American Civil Liberties Union has asked the state Attorney General to investigate concerns that the Bernalillo County Clerk’s Office may have given private voter registration information to the Republican Party.
That information could “make its way into the hands of people who want to influence their vote or intimidate them into not voting at all,” the ACLU of New Mexico said in its press release.
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Steve Rosenfeld is a senior fellow at Alternet.org and author of several books, including “Count My Vote: A Citizen’s Guide to Voting” and “What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election”.
Nice work. I don’t think the major papers have this good of a grasp on this issue. I’ve been writing about the culture war that many Republicans seem hell bent on creating – voter suppression tactics are a major weapon in their arsenal.
Are the Shits hitting the fan?
In Wisconsin, the Attorney General Van Hollen himself would not have been able to vote. He is listed on voter records as VanHollen. In addition, he had himself and two attorneys in his office working on the lawsuit filed against HIS OWN STATE. When the legislature asked for a cost of this lawsuit, Van Hollen had the audacity to say it cost $158 because the only cost was the filing fee of the lawsuit. Republicans love to waste my taxpayer money. I live in Dane County and love the way he got this handed back to him. He should have known better after the Supreme Court of the USA told the Ohio republicans they had no case on basically the same issue.
When Obama wins this election, all activists for Voting Integrity should plan a Welcome In party for him – sit him down with all the facts and demand the elimination of ALL voting machines across the country.
The GOP voter-suppression machine, aided and abetted by the complicit mainstream media, is still very powerful. Let’s hope that if Obama does win, it can pave the way for the commencement of war crime trials against Bush/Cheney/Rove, and serious criminal investigations (with teeth) against all parties involved in election-result-manipulation activities (such activities are not just a threat to the United States of America, but to the rest of the world, including Mexico, where elections were rigged as well (and possibly France, too?)
I agree with you, Adam, especially about the elections being rigged all over the globe. I been watching dat.
I think the spotlight is finally being shined into the dark recesses of this slimey GOP and I don’t think they can steal this one. If they attempt it, I think they’re gonna get caught and that will be the end of that.
That’s my gut feeling this time around.
I hope your intuition proves correct, Kira. The vile extremes the media has taken to hide the facts, and promote lies such as the bogus cooked-up ACORN “threat,” compromise the integrity of democracy.
I also think there should be criminal investigations into mainstream media participation and complicity in the Iraq war and suppression of information relating to election manipulation.
As well, existing anti-trust laws should be reinforced, and those that have been weakened and compromised under Bush/Cheney with the help of traitorous members of the Republican and Democratic parties alike, should be re-established.
It is time for the rule of law to be and legal accountability to be re-established in the United States of America. The world needs it.
Wilburrr . . .I been listening to right wing radio again and the “LIES” Whoa ! I’m so glad to report the term Right Wing Propaganda really makes’em squirm it’s like Kryptonite on Superman or silver bullets on vampires…
Is there an interactive map somewhere of these supression efforts? Obama and TPM both have interactive slime maps. This is far more important an issue.
Do your homework people. Brad is just as much a fear monger as anyone. OOhh the evil Republicans are trying to cheat and steal…don’t throw stones when you live in a glass house, dead Chicagoans have voted for eons. Here is a good bit of info. Brad didn’t tell you. In Albuquerque the county clerk, a Democrat hailed by all the “progressives” as wonderful, turned over 1500 questionable registrations to the FBI, a good portion of those were by submitted ACORN. Careful all you ideologues!
#9….Look for racist states and then the most racist areas of those states. One place Granville County NC …bad in ’04 for taking names of democrats off of the registration books. People noted they were much smaller….book written about the racism..Blood Done Sign My Name by Tyson. Odd title ….great book about the area’s racist history.Racism is the back bone of KKarl Rove’s strategy for election theft. Lots of people have to be paid off and kept quiet.If you have some of these places near you. Go there on Nov. 4th with a video camera.
Kira, great idea about a welcome party for Obama. Maybe someone has already put together a concise analysis of the fiscal impact (positive for taxpayers!) of returning to the appropriate technology of good old paper and pencil.
Citizen Racer barked:
Um, and how many of those submitted by ACORN were flagged BY ACORN as problematic, so that the Registrar would know about them being problematic in the first place?
Geez, next thing you know, you’ll tell us Dems were committing voter fraud in NM. Oh, wait, the RNC already did, before having to back off, when it wasn’t true. Go figure!
Better luck next time, champ. And better luck figuring out who is the “idealogue” around here, genius.
And golly, hope those leads are as good as the ones in NM in 2004 (4,000 of them, all of which turned out to be bogus, and got REPUBLICAN U.S. Attorney David Iglesias fired because he refused to bring bogus charges.) Sigh…
Very encouraging info, Steven! These aren’t the usual Dem/ liberal strongholds, either. They can’t so easily repeat that “Real America” supports their unconstitutional law.
Here’s some more good news for ya! “NO MATCH, NO VOTE” PROBLEMS CAN BE RESOLVED AT THE POLLS, ATTORNEY SAYS”:
…”An attorney for the Florida Association of Supervisors of Elections sent a letter to supervisors statewide today weighing in on the ongoing tiff between Pinellas County Supervisor Deborah Clark and Secretary of State Kurt Browning over voter verification at the polls.
“The opinion of Ron Labasky: Clark is within her right to resolve discrepancies under the “No match, no vote” law on Election Day…”
(Read the full letter here:) http://blogs.tampabay.com/buzz/...ch-no-vot.html
What’s especially delicioius about this Attorney: Labasky was KATHY DENT’s lawyer-he was everywhere in ’06-’07 defending these nefarious machines (and Dent) to the hilt! After this, and reading the above article, Browning’s unshakable position to this law seems even more deranged.
Many thanks to Dan McCrae and the Florida Voters Coalition for this major victory for voters! They’ve been hammering away at Browning for months! Way to go…
It’s allowed for Attorney Generals and other officials involved in the election to play an active role in a campaign? What kind of a banana republic is that???
Just depends on whether we can turn out enough voters to make their tactics hopeless.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOOUtOf1–M
Tune in, turn on, turn out.
dk