What kind of cheese should we send to the New York Times? Court Ruling May Impede Thousands of Ohio Voters

More than 200,000 registered Ohio voters may be blocked from casting regular ballots on Election Day because of a federal appeals court decision on Tuesday requiring the disclosure of lists of voters whose names did not match those on government databases, state election officials and voting experts said.

In other words, who the hell are these people? Do they live in Ohio? Are they Ohio residents? Do they appear on voter roles in other states? Do they even exist?

The court decisionrequires Jennifer Brunner, the Ohio secretary of state, to provide the names to local election officials by Friday. Once the local officials have the names, they may require these voters to cast provisional ballots rather than regular ones, and they may ask partisan poll workers to challenge these voters on Election Day. Both possibilities could cause widespread problems when the voters show up at the polls.

If she had done her job in the first place…. And now an appeal of the decision has gone to the Supreme Court, saying Republicans had 2 years to challenge. Perhaps the Ohio GOP thought the Ohio Sec of State would do her job and follow the law

Federal law requires states to verify voter registration applications with a government database like those for driver’s licenses or Social Security cards. Names that do not match are flagged for further verification. Since Democrats have been more aggressive at registering new voters this year, the decision will probably affect their party’s supporters disproportionately. Polling in the state shows Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, with a slight lead on his Republican challenger, Senator John McCain.

Social Security data indicate that Ohio election officials found more than 200,000 names that did not match this year; state election officials say their analysis of the data indicates that most of these are individual voters, not duplicate registrations. But Ms. Brunner said that problems with the databases could very well be why the names did not match.

So, do your job and investigate. Why do Democrats always think that the law doesn’t apply to them?

Expect the usual suspects on the left to call this “GOP voter fraud.” When it is ACORN registering Mickey Mouse and the starting offensive lineup of the Dallas Cowboys, eh, no big deal, they haven’t voted, but, unknown people who will probably vote Dem being forced to possibly use a provisional ballot? FRAUD! I wonder how many of those 200K will actually show up?

The Ohio Republican chairman, Robert T. Bennett, called the court ruling “a victory for the integrity of Ohio’s election.”

“Once again, Jennifer Brunner has wasted valuable taxpayer dollars only to have her partisan agenda rejected by a court of law,” Mr. Bennett said.

Yeah, but, somewhere in Liberal World, it is the Republican’s fault for bringing this issue to light.