The GOP's voter suppression lawsuit in Ohio, which was upheld by a majority Republican appointed judges on the US 6th District Circuit Court, was smacked down by the Supreme Court.

 

It's a victory for the Democrats and a proper defeat fot the GOP whose voting dirty tricks have stained the election process for forty years and becaome a weapon of choice for the Republican Atwater and Rove acolytes in their un-American machinations to allow the GOP to maintain government of, by and for the wealthy control of this nation.

 

Yesterday, I wrote : "The Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, has decided to appeal to the Supreme Court the decision of the US 6th Circuit Court of Appeals which upheld the GOP's lawsuit that demands comparison of the newly registered 660,000 voters against DMV data.

 

"It's another of the voter suppression tactics for which the GOP is infamous.

 

"By the way, of the 16 active judges on the circuit court, 5 were appointed by Clinton, 1 by Carter, 1 by Reagan, 1 by George H. W. Bush, and 8 by George W. Bush."

 

The LATimes reports: "The Supreme Court today threw out a lawsuit brought by the Ohio Republican Party that could have made it easier to challenge tens of thousands of newly registered voters.

"The high court, in a brief opinion, said the federal law that called for computer checks of new voters did not authorize private lawsuits to enforce it.

"The ruling is a victory for Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat. She said she feared "chaos" on election day if the GOP were permitted last-minute challenges to new voters based on data on file with the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

"Ohio, always a closely contested state, has seen more than 600,000 new registered voters this year. Brunner said she feared that as many as 200,000 of them could be challenged and forced to file provisional ballots if there were a mismatch between the information on their voter registration cards and the data on file with the DMV.

 

"The state GOP sued Brunner last month and asserted that her office had not complied with the federal Help America Voter Act. It says the state election chief must set up a computerized system that allows for checking new voters with the state DMV records. County officials want to see, for example, if the address of the new voter matches the address on file with the state.

"Brunner said Ohio had complied with that requirement. But the GOP lawsuit said her office should print out a list of "mismatches" for all 88 counties in Ohio.

"In response, Brunner said it would be troublesome to reprogram the state's computers at this late stage. However, a federal judge ordered her to make the change, and the U.S. court of appeals in Cincinnati upheld that order in a 10-6 vote.

"All the judges in the majority except one were Republican appointees. All the dissenters were nominated by Democrats.

 

"It was unclear what would have been done with the list of "mismatches." The appeals court judges said it would not have knocked voters off the rolls, but would simply have allowed officials to check further to make sure the voters were who they said they were.

"Democrats and liberal activists said they feared a move to block new voters from casting ballots."

 

In 2004 when the governor and the secretary of state were Republicans, voter suppression was the order of the day.  This time the governor and secretary of state are Democrats, members of the party that stands for voting rights.

 

Congratulations and well done, Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner.