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

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.

"Essentially that provision of HAVA is basically supposed to maintain voter registration databases," she said. "It is not for determining voter eligibility. The interpretation that seems to be coming from at least that particular judge takes HAVA and uses it as a means to exclude voters from a regular ballot. That is a concern."

More at:

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

Isn't it illegal to use the SS card for ID purposes?

The state where Republicans seem to always be finding so many threats of "voter fraud" also *JUST HAPPENS* to be a big swing state with a lot of electoral college votes. :eyes:

I'm betting alot of those 200,000 are dems........damn it........In WI we received notice the first part of October saying we had to send in a slip with our birthdate so they could bump against the DMV registeration. I took both coupons into my local clerk. I told her it was just another way of caging voters. This was a result of a lawsuit from the rethugs......in WI it's no big deal as you can register the day of the election with ID and a utility bill, but it could make for some very long lines to vote.


edited to make a correction