The GOP Tries To Steal Ohio And More Part 2

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner's counterstroke against the Ohio GOP's legal victory forcing her to come up with a plan to verify all of Ohio's new voters? Appealing to the Supreme Court on the grounds that forcing the new voters to cast provisional ballots will disenfranchise hundreds of thousands.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to decide how 200,000 Ohioans will be voting in the presidential election.

Brunner wants those newly registered voters to use regular ballots. The Ohio Republican Party would prefer that they fill out provisional ballots to give boards of elections time to determine whether they are eligible to vote or not.

Late Wednesday, Brunner appealed a ruling from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that would force her to cross-check the names of people who have registered to vote or updated registrations since Jan. 1 against a state driver's license database. She would then have to tell Ohio's 88 boards of elections how to deal with people who don't match up.

Brunner fears voter suppression if the appeals court decision stands, since many provisional ballots are not counted for a variety of technicalities.

The GOP says a reversal of the appeals ruling would increase chances of voter fraud.

The court could decide to take up the case today.

At stake here is just how tough voter verification laws need to be surrounding the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, passed after Florida in 2000.

The Republicans argue that ideally anything less than 100% certainty and Federal uniformity in state voter eligibility laws will result in voter registration fraud and vote fraud, and that the right to vote is the most cherished right in America and therefore should be the most protected, and that if Americans seriously want to exercise that right, they must be willing to endure close scrutiny on behalf of the country. There is plenty of evidence that rigged elections throughout the world are a problem.

Democrats argue that there's no evidence of the kind of voter fraud the Republicans are complaining about, and that they are in fact trying to surpress millions of minority and poor voters -- traditionally Democratic voters -- in order to assure Republicans win elections. There's plenty of evidence to support laws designed to reduce turnout of these groups in our own history, laws struck down as unconstitutional burdens upon these voters.

The Supreme Court, if they take up the decision, could be deciding the future of voting in this country. It's very possible that the Supreme Court ruling will be used as a precedent across the country for minimum standards in voter eligibility checks. If they rule in favor of the Ohio GOP and do define strict guildelines for voter eligibility in the Buckeye State, there will be precedent to possibly rework voter eligibility laws across the country, and the challenges the GOP can make to new voters across the country, perhaps even in this election.

How much chaos would it cause if dozens of states that didn't already meet the strict guidelines the Supreme Court could hand down to Ohio had to then force all their new voters into provisional ballots? Millions of votes could get rejected across the country for not meeting the criteria, and that could turn an Obama landslide into a McSame victory.

If they side with Secretary Brunner, it may be a pyrrhic victory as well. Certainly the right wing Wurlitzer will sound off that more than ever McSame must win the election in order to replace the Supreme Court's "judicial activists" with "patriotic Americans" and will motivate even more hatred and bile against Obama than before. He will be seen as illegitimate by possibly millions of Americans, and it would only take one to possibly bring him harm, most likely spouting that famous Jeffersonian quote about the Tree of Liberty needing to be refreshed by the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Whether or not you agree that the GOP is trying to steal THIS election (I believe they are, they always play to win) they will try to set the stage for as much dehumanizing hatred as possible against Barack Obama. There will be violence eventually. It's just a matter of how deadly and widespread it will be. In these dire economic times, economic times that will get far, far worse before they get better, we will see good people do bad things in the name of what they believe to be justice.

This Supreme Court decision could become the GOP's final revenge against us all.