The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued an order this evening reinstating the district court's TRO requiring Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner to provide county election boards with state voter registration information so as to facilitate confirmation of registration information. Rick Hasen has details and initial thoughts here and here.
A majority of the en banc court has reinstated a TRO, which will require the Ohio Secretary of State to send along to county elections boards those names that are a "mismatch" between voter registration and Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicle records. The TRO does not require, and the en banc court majority emphasizes, that a county board is not required upon hearing of the mismatch to remove eligible voters from the rolls. But the court does suggest (on page 9 of the pdf) that it would be the basis for not counting absentee ballots of voters flagged as a mismatch barring further investigation by the board. There may also be some boards that could try to require mismatched voters voting in person to cast provisional ballots. And it also appears that to the extent the mismatch lists are public, it will provide the potential basis for challenges by the ORP on election day (though I believe it is now harder to mount such challenges in Ohio than it was in 2004, when the ORP threatened to make 35,000 challenges at the polls.
The AP reports here.
The opinion is now available here. [Note: Link updated to reflect revised opinion Wed., Oct. 15 at 10AM]
All Related Posts (on one page) | Some Related Posts:
- Recusal Row in Ohio Republican Party v. Brunner:
- Thoughts on Brunner v. Ohio Republican Party:
- Ohio SoS Seeks Emergency Stay from Justice Stevens:
- En Banc Sixth Circuit Reinstates TRO in Ohio Election Case:
- How Bad Are Ohio's Electoral Problems?...
- Fraudulent Registrations No Threat:
- Sixth Circuit Sides with Ohio SoS; Vacates Injunction:
- Is Voter Registration Fraud Unavoidable?
What has this pitiful country come to?
Granted, things are somewhat more complicated in the US because of of the tendency to have more races at the same time (we have a municipal election here next month), but even so I am amazed at the mess that the US has made of elections.
Nothing. I'm just pointing out that neither error nor fraud due to the use of voting machines nor voting by those ineligible or denial of the vote to those eligible is an issue here.
Though, the scale of the election does tend to bury problems in the news.
I guess they could become related if somebody decided to combine biometric identification of voters with the use of electronic voting machines. That is probably such a bad idea that I shouldn't mention it.
Cabeza, is it necessary for you to play the hack every single post? It gets old quick. The fact is that the election law on this issue is not clear. The SoS claims that HAVA doesn't require her to take the actions that the District Court claims she does and being this close to the election, forcing the SoS to create a new system of verification is very onerous and may well cause more harm than good. But such subtleties don't fit your hackery MO and so we get one more of your pointless and fact-free comments.
TIA, thank you for your inciteful analysis. I will be sure to bring up your concerns at the next shareholder meeting.
Bill - saying voter fraud isn't an issue up there isn't quite the same thing as saying it doesn't happen. Are you arguing the latter?
P.s. I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment of the mess complex voting systems have produced in the US. Long live the paper ballot.
I am thinking you've never had to QA a query of someone else's complicated database.
Care to answer my question?
It's true that there could be voter fraud here in Canada without it being an issue, but I don't know of any reason to believe that there is much. I'm not aware of any studies suggesting that there is much fraud, or suggestions that there are serious holes in the registration or voter identification procedures. For that matter, I haven't seen much evidence of voter fraud (in the form of ineligible people voting) in the US, even though it is an issue.
And yes, Bill, we Americans know everything is better in Canada . . . We all just wish we were Canadian.
Judge Bachelder should have disqualified herself. Two Ohio Supreme Court justices who are running for reelection (Stratton and O'Connor) disqualified themselves from similar challenges in state court.
On another note, I think the Election Blog and this blog have missed one key goal of this litigation. The Secretary of State has one seat on the three-member apportionment board. That board will reapportion Ohio's state and federal legislative districts based on the 2010 Census. One of the other seats is firmly in Republican hands (auditor). The other is firmly in Democratic hands (attorney general). If the Republicans can knock of Brunner, they control reapportionment. That is why key reason that the have launched a full frontal assault on anything Brunner does.
On behalf of the Obama campaign, I accept your concession.
That makes the score 20-0, so far.
Democratic judges tend to disagree with Republican judges. I was able to predict this based on the simple premise that Republican judges always write opinions based on principle, whereas Democratic ones write them based on hatred for the Republicans.
I must admit I knew what the result would be beforehand, since all true principles are Republican anyhow.
And I also know that Democratic judges are totally in on the conspiracy to steal the election! Democrats always flock together to do evil without any sense of reward. This is because they are united by their hatred of America.
This is just like all those Democratic whiners in 2000, only this time it's true, as proven conclusively by Norman Bates and his astounding science!
That makes the score 20-0, so far.
I am on the board of a fairly large gun club in a mostly union area.
It is so depressing. Not just that he is going to win, but who is voting for him and why.
"Is vote for Obama. Unions says to, he gets in and plants come back. My Grankids will have good jobs likes I did."
"Obama won't not ban guns, the unions says so."
"Obamas only raise taxes on the rich."
I have lived at the same address for more than ten years. Nevertheless, DMV went ahead and changed my address several times. It was at least a minor hassle to get that mistake corrected for DMV purposes. I would have found it annoying to have been disenfranchised as a result.
Do we really want a Neanderthal to be President?
Because there is no such thing as an objective Democratic judge. Especially not one that disagrees with Norman Bates!
"For that matter, I haven't seen much evidence of voter fraud (in the form of ineligible people voting) in the US, even though it is an issue."
Check out this article:
In the 2004 Washington race, several hundred convicted felons (ineligible to vote in WA) did in fact vote. The US Attorney concluded there was no evidence of voter fraud because there was no direct evidence that they knew their voting was illegal.
You have one race in each district. None is as important as the presidency on the party's future. Besides Congress, 1/3 have senate races. Most [all?] states are electing state legislatures plus many have state issues or other races.
The scale does make a difference. A huge difference.
Plus, while we tend to think of Canadians as Little Americans, I know there are distinct cultural and historical differences.
Is there a history of big city voter fraud in Canada? There is in the US, that is what the non-urban GOP fears. Rightly or wrongly.
Many Dems here think, or say they think, that there is a big conspiracy for Diebold to steal elections.
So, fraud, or belief in fraud, is a major issue here.
I'm so confused! Who do I get to blame for this election, the rubes or the elites, or some unholy crossbreed of both?
Ah, dash it all, I'm just going to blame ACORN!
I'm pretty confident that I have more experience working with election databases than any of the judges of the CoA.
This TRO is affirmative, requiring someone to take action.
How common is this?
That is likely enough for the Democrats to have stolen Ohio's electoral votes, if she'd gotten away with it.
I also came across this indication of what appears to be fraud.
Some of the rest surely involve simple database or transcription errors or failures by people who move to notify the motor vehicles people - in other words, they involve people who *are* eligible to vote. I wouldn't be surprised if this category is large, for completely non-nefarious reasons. Sorting out the fraudulent from the non-fraudulent would require individualized investigation.
At least, for the 2/3 of registrations which came back matched, county officials no longer have to worry too much. They can concentrate their attention on the remaining 1/3. I think that's progress. The Secretary of State's continued insistence that nothing should be done to try to reconcile discrepencies is troubling, but can easily be attributed to a hyper-partisan outlook rather than a subjective intent to enable fraud.
The NVRA clearly provides:
Congress is pretty clear here: A state must finish any systematic removal of voters from the rolls 90 days before the election. Congress has prohibited a state from doing what the district court and the en banc majority has ordered.
The potential for 200,000 mismatches between the state voter database and the state motor vehicle database is consistent with experience from other states. Mismatches of 15-30% have been found. Some of it has been due to diffences in how the databases handle spaces and punctuation: one example is “O'Neil” versus “ONeil”.
Wow, Greg, great to see that you've actually reviewed the registrations. What we've learned so far is that 2/3rd of the early registrations show no conflict between the voter registration information and what's in the other state databases. So if ACORN was the one pushing these registrations, the claims that all of their registrations are fraudulent is already disproven.
The other 1/3rd? We don't know. People are assuming that the DMV database is error-free. Why? There's no such thing as an error-free database and the data error is just as likely the result of bad data in the DMV database versus the voter registration. The other thing to keep in mind is that in urban areas, many people don't have drivers licenses (I know, a foreign concept to those who live in the suburbs). The DMV database is pretty useless for doing any voter identification. I have no doubt that in that 200,000 there are some fraudulent registrations. I've seen how Republican petition collectors submit fraudulent signatures to know that it happens. But I'm pretty confident that the number is a lot less than 200,000 and that the impact on the actual election results will be minimal.
With 20% due to typos alone in that sample reported from New York, Wisconsin's recent 22% mismatch doesn't look that bad.
Would that count as "any program the purpose of which is to systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters."
I don't believe it does. I can see where it's arguable, but I believe Judge Moore's statement to be an overstatement.
Well, you may have a point: The court's order effectively requires the State of Ohio to undertake a ‘a program the purpose of which is to systematically remove the names of eligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters.’
Big difference there. The cited portion of the NVRA says nothing about intentionally preventing eligible voters from casting regular ballots. So you have a point. Tossing out elible voters may be okey-dokey.
If 200,000 registrants with potential mismatches must cast provisional ballots, then we expect that about a third of those ballots may be uncounted. However, that's an interesting expectation, as it's drawn from a national average. The distribution within particular jurisdictions needs to be looked at in more detail. It may turn out that there's a third of chance that none of the provisional ballots will be counted within particular jurisdictions or statewide.
I guess I don't see what the problem is as long as those votes cast provisionally by eligible voters are counted and those cast by those who are not eligible to vote are not.
I understand that the administration of George Bush, 41, was notoriously liberal, so you may discount that adminsistration's policy. Nevertheless in that administration, the DoJ prosecuted practices like the one the district court and the Sixth circuit have mandated.
You can play pretend all you want. But Republican Judge George C. Smith's order paves the way for a practice that the DoJ, under a nominally Republican administration, obtained a consent decree from the Republican party to prohibit.
The mismatch information for each registrant is available to the county boards. The order, though, requires Ohio to reprogram the database routines, on the eve of the election, to provide a list of the mismatches.
We're not blind here.
I'm not trying to pull one over on you, nor am I playing pretend. I'm arguing in good faith with the information I have. I wasn't aware of the DOJ's prosecution of the mandated practices. It was my understanding that the mismatch information is available to the county boards, but that the information was rendered useless because the boards would have to enter each voter's name separately to locate a mismatch. The lists were a way for the boards to identify mismatches, making the database less of a haystack to find the needles. If that indeed is a practice prosecuted by a Republican DOJ, then I guess I don't agree with the DOJ at that time.
My preferred practices would be those that encouraged registration and discouraged fraud. I think the order accomplishes that. I am guessing we disagree on that. But I won't accuse you of sophistry to make my point. I can't wait for this election to be over so that I can have conversations with people that don't devolve into arguments where motives and character are thrown into question. I hope you have a lovely evening in which you are rooting for the Red Sox to dig themselves out of this hole.
M