Court orders Ohio to verify newly registered voters (updated)

Court orders Ohio to verify newly registered voters

(CNN) -- A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered Ohio's secretary of state to establish a system to verify hundreds of thousands of newly registered voters by Friday.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner also has to make the eligibility information available to all 88 county election boards and use government records to check for voter registration fraud.

Nine of the 16 members of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with an opinion that upheld a lower court's ruling in the lawsuit filed by the Ohio Republican Party against Brunner.

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The majority opinion of the full court called Ohio's current system "essentially useless" and found it does "nothing to address the anti-fraud objective."

Brunner on Tuesday said she prepared for the court's "possible adverse decision" ahead of time by announcing plans to "further improve the statewide voter registration database."

"Our goal is to protect the rights of all eligible voters to vote and to have their votes count," she said.