"Red flags on voter records may lead to nothing" but OH GOP files Suit anyway

[mod mom]

Red flags on voter records may lead to nothing
Tuesday, October 7, 2008 3:02 AM
By Mark Niquette
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH



The Ohio Republican Party asked a federal court on Sunday to force Brunner to identify mismatches since Jan. 1 and try to resolve any discrepancies before the Nov. 4 election, arguing that people could register with bogus information that isn't verified.

"This is no mere technicality; it is the cornerstone of American democracy that every qualified voter should vote, but that persons who are not qualified voters should not vote," the GOP said in its court filing.

U.S. District Court Judge George C. Smith of Columbus ordered Brunner to respond by 10 a.m. today, although both sides asked jointly to delay that until Wednesday.

Brunner said in an interview yesterday that fears about voter fraud are overblown, and she's concerned that Republicans are seeking grounds to challenge voters or are discouraging voting.



-snip



http://www.dispatchpolitics.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/10/07/copy/who_checks.ART_ART_10-07-08_A1_A5BHK4B.html?adsec=politics&sid=101

This is over the HAVA required registration lookups through AAMVA private corporation that interfaces with the SSA lookups. Many lookups do not "match" and this could be from middle initials, typos, someone with a same name and birthdate. If you want some technical details I posted some below but a little googling of "AAMVA HAVA" will show a lot of states' roll-out plans and some of the technical aspects of what is a "match" and what isn't.


From AAMVA:
H.R. 3295, HAVA of 2002, mandates that states verify the identities of newly registered voters. When newly registered voters do not have driver's licenses or state-issued ID cards, they must supply the last four digits of their Social Security Numbers (SSNs) to their local state election agencies for verification. The election agencies forward this information to their state motor vehicle administration (MVA) that inputs the data into AAMVA's central consolidation system that routes the voter data to SSA's Help America Vote Verification (HAVV) system. Once SSA's HAVV system has confirmed the identity of the voter, the information will be returned along the same route (in reverse) until it reaches the state election agency. The official respondents for this collection are the state MVAs.