Debates about election integrity usually pit Democrats worried about access against Republicans worried about fraud. In Ohio, a flashpoint has partisans taking the opposite sides: Republicans accuse the Democratic secretary of state of trying to disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters.
Today, lawyers for the McCain campaign sued the Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, allegeding that she's unlawfully rejecting absentee ballot requests. In Hamilton County, as many as a third of all requests were deemed invalid, sending the campaign scrambling to recontact voters.
Why?
Not because the forms lacked the requisite signatures and information. It's because the forms, printed by the McCain campaign, had something extra -- a box that asked voters to verify that " I am a qualified elector and would like to receive an Absentee Ballot for the November 4, 2008 General Election."
And even though the box isn't required, if would-be voters failed to check it, then they've turned in an invalid ballot, Brunner says.
Jon Seaton, the McCain campaign's regional manager for midwestern states, said in an interview that the forms used by the campaign were copied from a form that the state has previously accepted -- namely, applications turned in ahead of Republican Bob Lotta's congressional race in 2007.
Brunner told the Cincinatti Enquirer that "The law is clear. The problem is with McCain's form."
This is the second major dispute between Brunner and the McCain campaign. The first also involved absentee ballots, specifically Brunner's ruling that voters could request absentees on the same day they register to vote even though a state law seems to require new registrants to wait 30 days before filling out a request.
Ohio's governor, Ted Strickland, signed a law allowing no-excuse absentee ballots, and Brunner was elected in part to erase the sting of former Sec. of State Ken Blackwell, whose pre-election rulings in 2004 were deemed to be partisan, even by many Republicans.
| 
