Ohio Elections Chief Challenges Court Ruling
Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday, asking the high court to intervene in a dispute over whether the state must do more to help counties verify voter eligibility.
Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner (Jenniferbrunner.com)
Brunner said a temporary restraining order preventing the state from offering witnesses to explain “how the complex database system works” will allow challenges at the county level to fully qualified voters and could “severely disrupt the voting process.”
In her court filing, Brunner, the state’s top elections chief, called the suit filed by the Ohio Republican Party “baseless” and suggested she can’t comply with the order from the lower court.
“As things now stand, the secretary must reprogram the statewide voter registration database by Friday — after Ohioans have begun voting, and as she and the 88 county boards of elections are undertaking other efforts to ensure that the general election in Ohio will be a smooth one,” she wrote.
On Tuesday, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati sided with the GOP and ordered Brunner, a Democrat, to set up a system that provides names of newly registered voters whose driver’s license numbers or Social Security numbers don’t match records in other government databases.
The GOP contends the information will help prevent fraud. Brunner, a Democrat, has called the issue a veiled attempt at disenfranchising voters and that other checks exist to help determine eligibility.
In a statement released almost immediately after Brunner’s appeal, state GOP chairman Kevin DeWine said Brunner should’ve instituted changes long ago, before the time crunch of the election.
“This is a shameful mess, and Ohioans are rapidly losing confidence in Secretary Brunner’s ability to protect the integrity of this election,” DeWine said.
“Jennifer Brunner dropped a bombshell on Wednesday in revealing that as many as 200,000 registrations contain bad information, and she’s arrogantly fighting every effort to validate these questionable forms. She apparently lied to the media on Wednesday when her office vowed to comply with the district court’s order. It’s time to stop wasting valuable tax dollars and start fulfilling her legal obligations,” he continued.
Justice John Paul Stevens oversees the 6th Circuit and is in receipt of the filing. He has the option to deny the appeal outright or he can take it to the full court for consideration. If he rejects the appeal, the secretary of state has the option of sending it back under another judge.
In a statement accompanying the filing, Brunner blamed the ruling on politics. “Like so many recent controversies, this issue has been raised less than one month before the election — and it was only raised by one political party,” she said.
“Ohio has longstanding election law safeguards, such as confirmation cards for new registrants, and a bipartisan structure for boards and polling places. Ohioans can be confident that voter registration fraud by some paid registration workers will not translate into illegal voting in our state,” she said.
In noting that Ohio’s voter registration follows federal law, Brunner suggested that the bipartisan boards of elections in the state develop a means to protect election officials from litigation when they don’t purge mismatched data as well as “a solution” that includes a uniform process for all 88 counties to compare mismatched data; protect voters who are wrongly purged; and upgrade a voter query system that will guide counties on what to do with the information.
Click here to read Secretary of State Brunner’s appeal to the Supreme Court.
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