On October 17, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, and against the Ohio Republican Party, in a dispute over how to handle new voter registrations. The case in the U.S. Supreme Court is Brunner v Ohio Republican Party, no. 08A332. The Republican Party had sued the Secretary of State earlier this month, and had won an order from the Sixth Circuit, directing the Secretary of State to forward certain voting registration records to Ohio’s counties. The U.S. Supreme Court has countermanded the Sixth Circuit’s order.

The U.S. Supreme Court two-page order says the Supreme Court is expressing no opinion whatsoever on the issue itself, but the Supreme Court feels that only the federal government (and not a private entity) has the ability to bring a lawsuit against a state, over how the relevant part of the “Help America Vote Act” of 2002 (section 203) is being implemented.

The issue itself is how to handle the 200,000 new voter registrations in which there is an imperfect match between data on the voter registration itself, and data for that same voter in the State’s Department of Motor Vehicles database, or in the Social Security database. An imperfect match arises for many reasons. Sometimes it is related to address. Sometimes it is related to surnames. Women sometimes change their surnames and that change is reflected in some databases and not others. There are also surname mismatches for many Hispanic people, because traditional Hispanic surnames involve two words, but sometimes only the first half of the surname gets into one database or another.

If the data about mismatches had been sent to each Ohio County Election Board, then the Republican Party would have been able to obtain the lists, and challenge voters who were on the list.

The Court acted with lightning speed. Brunner’s request had been made on October 15. The Republican Party had responded on October 16. Also on October 16, the AFL-CIO had filed an amicus brief on the Secretary of State’s side. Thanks to Rick Hasen’s electionlawblog for this news.

On November 18, Ohio will hold a special U.S. House election in the 11th district, to fill the vacancy caused by the death earlier this year of Stephanie Tubbs Jones. The ballot in the special election will contain only one name, that of Democratic nominee Marcia Fudge.

One independent candidate submitted a petition to be on the ballot in that election. He is James Germalic. The law required him to submit 750 valid signatures by October 13. He submitted 1,385 signatures, but he was told that only 487 of his signatures were valid. Ohio consistently has the lowest petition validity of any state in the nation. Germalic says his circulators were careful to avoid obtaining signatures from people who don’t live in the district. The biggest problem seemed to be that so many voters have moved since they last registered to vote. They sign the petition showing their current address, but that address doesn’t match the voter registration records, and the signature is then invalid.