Brunner: I'll obey court order, but thousands could lose their right to vote (OH)

Source: Cleveland.com

October 15, 2008 13:33PM

COLUMBUS -- More than 200,000 Ohioans who registered to vote this year for the first time or updated their voting information since Jan. 1 could be affected by the latest court ruling requiring the state to set up a new registration verification system by Friday, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said.

Brunner said she would comply with the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling late Tuesday but said she is deeply concerned that the decision is a veiled attempt at disenfranchising voters.

The court's 9-6 opinion, written by Judge Jeffrey Sutton, suggested that voters whose driver's license number or Social Security number does not exactly match those found on databases maintained by the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles or Social Security Administration could be required to use provisional ballots instead of conventional ones.

"The thing that concerns me is that Judge Sutton indicated that these mismatched names could be subjected to provisional voting and nowhere in is that the case. The Help America Vote Act is really not meant to be used to disenfranchise or to help determine voter eligibility," Brunner said in an interview today.


Read more: http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/10/jennifer_brunner_says_courts_d.html

Clerk for Fat Tony Scalia.
Born in Saudi Arabia (probably an old "family friend" of the Bush Crime Family)

Oh yeah, this guy's as "fair and balanced" as FAUX Noize.

Jeffrey Sutton....?

He looks very young.
Suspiciously young.

And I wonder if he is any relation to Johnny Sutton, who is the handpicked justice Dept. AG of
DC.

Oh, lookee here....what I found:

Sutton is a member of the Federalist Society.
And Patrick Leahy said, at Sutton's 2003 confirmation hearing, that Sutton has a history of
weakening Constitutional laws which serve minorities, etc.

http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200304/042903a.html

another Rove bot, doing what he was placed on the bench to do.

To ensure the Bush Doctrine is around for decades to come.

Wait for Dennis Kucinich to introduce articles of impeachment against this fascist!

I cannot wait for the next Congress to impeach this clown and the Senate convicts him!

:rofl:

Saudi ARAB MOOSLIMS!!!!1!!!!11!!!

and you're likely to make that man angry. Is this the plan? Is this why American soldiers are now active in the states?

oh, wait.

From the above article:

"Provisional ballot voting is often the most problematic and confusing form of voting. A Plain Dealer review found that 20 percent of the provisional ballots cast statewide for this year's Republican and Democratic presidential primaries were rejected because some part of the complicated process was not properly followed and thus the person's vote was not counted."

"The thing that concerns me is that Judge Sutton indicated that these mismatched names could be subjected to provisional voting..."

Not all provisional ballots will (or even should) be counted. But if thousands upon thousands of duly registered voters will be forced to cast provisional ballots, it will be crucial that those be counted before election results are released. Because of the pressure for immediate release of election results, provisional ballots are not included in the results released election night. Provisional ballots have to be looked at indidually to determine whether or not they'll be counted. This is part of why forcing people to vote provisionally results in massive disenfranchisement.

"there is no difference between the candidates for president." This is why it matters. The judges on the federal bench impact your daily existence. From your employment, to your privacy, to your right to vote ... it matters!

What's done is done. It sucks, but it's done. The A-Holes got away with it. No sense in bitching about what can't be stopped. The Democratic Party and the OH Secretary of State's office need to get their asses in gear quick and tell the affected people to get their asses in to their local voter registration offices and update their paperwork. If they moved it into high gear, they could get most of them straightened out.

the streets be lined with bodies of all responsible. It will come to that if we don't take some measures now. "Get over it"? "They got away with it"? "Could get most of them fixed"? That is what we've been saying for 14 years, and its accomplished nothing. These people are criminals. They need to be dealt with like criminals. Real, dark, cold, crowded prisons.

trying to undo legal mandates, when that SAME amount of money could be used HIRING people to make sure that people HAD the necessary ID, and to update the "incorrect" registrations..

GETTING poor people the IDS they could use in OTHER areas of their lives would be a blessing for them too...and would remove any doubt when they vote every few years..

Instead, we always fall into the Briar patch as we try to use the legal route in a system that is still hopelessly stacked against us... We've been on the "outs" for nearly 30 years in that area, so instead of wasting all the legal money, especially when it always seems to "happen" when there is little actual TIME left before an election, seems counterproductive to me..


It's time to call their bluff...get those people IDed-up and ready to go and THEN change the laws...and start ousting some of these creepy judges..

Now, how do we get our party to start doing this?

It's triage. First, take care of the most immediate, acute need. Then take care of the chronic problem.

suggested that voters whose driver's license number or Social Security number does not exactly match those found on databases maintained by the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles or Social Security Administration

I thought the only people who could demand access to your SSN were your employer, your bank, and the IRS.

Voter Identification Requirements

Voters must bring identification to the polls in order to verify identity. Identification may include:

A current and valid photo identification card (e.g., driver's license or state ID)
A military identification
A copy of a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or other government document that shows the voter’s name and current address.


Note: You cannot use as proof of identification a notice that the board of elections mailed to you. Voters who do not provide one of these documents will still be able to vote by provisional ballot. Voters who do not have any of the above forms of identification, including a social security number, will still be able to vote by signing an affirmation swearing to the voter’s identity under penalty of election falsification and by casting a provisional ballot.

http://boe.cuyahogacounty.us/en-US/voter-identification-requirements.aspx

myself. And how much ya wanna bet that the "databases" being relied upon will somehow mysteriously "change" all kinds of information so that there are plenty of mismatches? I lived in Ohio in '04, and there was a lot of anger over what Blackwell helped the GOP to pull, as SOS. I don't think this kind of shit is going to go down very well this time.

I saw an article in the paper the other day where the voter mis-wrote one of the numbers on his application. He was called and told about the mistake, but I'm not sure if he could still fix it.

Hawai'i used to put SS numbers on its state IDs (not driver licenses). Then they realized that made state ID holders juicy targets for ID theft. Off they came.

Only the last four.

I used my social exclusively for years, along with my birth certificate. I didn't get my license until I was well into my 20's. Then my social was my license number, and it wasn't until I think the 90's that I was issued a drivers license #, and I'm pretty sure that was by choice. But as far as identity for governmental purposes I don't know what other forms of identity would be acceptable, but I'm sure that information is provided by the registration form that is available on line.

and they wanted either my driver's license number or the last four digits of my social security number. I also used a paper ballot because I just don't trust those Diebold machines.

Source: New York Times

More than 200,000 registered Ohio voters may be blocked from casting regular ballots on Election Day because of a federal appeals court decision on Tuesday requiring the disclosure of lists of voters whose names did not match those on government databases, state election officials and voting experts said.

The court decision requires Jennifer Brunner, the Ohio secretary of state, to provide the names to local election officials by Friday. Once the local officials have the names, they may require these voters to cast provisional ballots rather than regular ones, and they may ask partisan poll workers to challenge these voters on Election Day. Both possibilities could cause widespread problems when the voters show up at the polls.

Concerns about those problems led the Ohio Attorney General’s Office to file an appeal of the decision to the United States Supreme Court on behalf of Ms. Brunner on Wednesday night.

The state’s appeal went directly to Justice John Paul Stevens because he oversees the Sixth Circuit. It argued that the Republican Party had nearly two years to raise complaints about the process of screening voter registrations and failed to do so. Any changes now to the process would disrupt preparations for the election, it contended.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/16/us/16vote.html?hp

think the vast majority of voters on these lists are Dems. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but...

Do yuh think?

They'd have to steal Ohio. And Florida. And Virginia. And Missouri. And Colorado. And probably at least two of: NC, MN, WI, IA, OR, NV, NM.

In a word, it's not going to happen.

Also, is it just me, or are people who sign up to vote through a proxy like an ACORN canvasser or a high school registration drive kind of...what's the word...oh: "fucking idiotic" if they don't also check to make sure they actually were properly registered??? How fucking hard is it to pick up a phone or GET ONLINE and check your registration????

Source: AP

CINCINNATI (AP) - Close to one in every three newly registered Ohio voters will end up on court-ordered lists being sent to county election boards because they have some discrepancy in their records, an elections spokesman said Wednesday.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner estimated that an initial review found that about 200,000 newly registered voters reported information that did not match motor-vehicle or Social Security records, Brunner spokesman Kevin Kidder said. Some discrepancies could be as simple as a misspelling, while others could be more significant.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati sided with the Ohio Republican Party on Tuesday and ordered Brunner to set up a system that provides those names to county elections boards. The GOP contends the information will help prevent fraud....

About 666,000 Ohioans have registered to vote since January.

Brunner previously cross-checked new-voter registrations with databases run by the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicle and the Social Security Administration and made the results available online, but the 6th Circuit said the information was not accessible in a way that would help county election boards ferret out mismatches.

Brunner, a Democrat, told The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer on Wednesday that she is concerned the court decision is a veiled attempt at disenfranchising voters. Brunner said she'll urge counties not to force these people to use provisional ballots.

The court gave Brunner until Friday to get election boards the information but it was unclear whether that deadline would be met. The court set no penalty for missing the deadline....

Read more: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D93R8IE00&show_article=1

And they won't.

Not this time.

See: Ohio's Voting-Rights Ruling: What's the Upshot?

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/10/ohios_voting-rights_ruling_wha.php

the truth is, Disenfranchised by selfish, win -at-any-cost-no-matter-how-it harms-the-country Republican tricksters who can't win on their ideology, but have to resort to this low class bullsnot.

I was told just yesterday that all I needed was a current utility bill because my drivers license doesn't match my current address. What the fuck are they telling us now? Or NOT telling us? I haven't heard a fucking thing about this on the news.

I'm calling her fucking office right now.

Wouldn't this effect newly married women who have changed their names? The name wouldn't match the SSN or DL# on the state's records. Am I missing something? Is there another group this could apply to?