Breaking News: En Banc Sixth Circuit, Reverses 3 Judge Panel and Reinstates Trial Court TRO In Ohio

[kpete]

October 14, 2008
Breaking News: En Banc Sixth Circuit, By Divided Vote, Reverses 3 Judge Panel and Reinstates Trial Court TRO, in Ohio Matching Case

The 50-page document in Ohio Republican Party v. Brunner, No. 08-4322, is available on PACER but too large for me to post on the blog. I expect it will be up at Moritz shortly. From my initial look, it looks like the vote was 9-5, with one judge (Rogers) not recorded as signing either the majority opinion, or the concurring opinion, or the three dissenting opinions.

Because the issue presented here in part turns on whether this TRO comes too close to the election, in violation of the Supreme Court's admonition in Purcell v. Gonzalez, I would expect a quick application for a stay of the en banc order directed to Justice Stevens, as Circuit Justice for the Sixth Circuit.

Posted by Rick Hasen at 03:27 PM
http://electionlawblog.org/archives/011810.html
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/06pdf/06A375.pdf

[hvn_nbr_2]

1. What's a TRO? What does this mean? nt

[stillcool]

3. I always thought it was a

temporary restraining order?

[hvn_nbr_2]

4. Thanks.

I thought of that just as I hit "post message" but I still don't know what the original or reinstated TRO are about.

[stopbush]

2. What does it mean in layman's terms?

[Fly by night]

5. I have the same question. (Please type slowly for us non-lawyers)

[L. Coyote]

6. AP story is interesting in what was left out of the story = Ohio Republican Chairman Bob Bennett

Federal court: Ohio must check voter registrations
By PHILIP ELLIOTT, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 1 minute ago
Associated Press writer Stephen Majors contributed to this report.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081015/ap_on_el_pr/voter_registration_lawsuit


COLUMBUS, Ohio - A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered .....

About 666,000 Ohioans have registered to vote since January, with many doing so before the contested Democratic presidential primary election last March between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. The presidential election is Nov. 4.

Since the primary, Ohio Republicans have filed a series of challenges to the registrations ....

....

Ohio Republican Chairman Bob Bennett accused Brunner of pursuing a partisan agenda and said "her delay in providing this matching system leaves little time for election officials to act on questionable registrations."

Bennett said Brunner was destroying the public's trust in Ohio's elections system.

"Her shameful actions to disenfranchise Republican absentee voters, block the transparency of early voting and refuse the proper verification of newly registered voters have rightfully damaged her credibility as a nonpartisan election administrator," he said.

...

=====================
Left out of the story: Brunner fired Bennett! He WAS also Chair of Cuyahoga County BOE.

[janet118]

7. Oh no!!!! Not the Supreme Court again!!!

Although it looks like previous Supreme Court rulings dictate that it is too close to the election for this ruling in favor of the GOP to stand, who knows what will happen once it is in the hands of the robed robbers. "Unprecedented" seems to be the guiding principle of all three branches of government for these past 8 years. Unprecedented is just another way of saying, "Wake up, America!!! It can happen here."

It looks like the Ohio Secretary of State's office is trying to direct the case to Justice Stevens for a pre-election stay based on precedent. However, should one of the other justices interfer on behalf of the GOP and the SCOTUS upholds Ohio's 6th Circuit Court's second ruling, this is what will have to happen before Nov. 4th.

Tuesday's order directs Brunner to verify new registrations by comparing information on them with the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles or the Social Security Administration.

According to election lawyer on NPR, most of the ID and registration form typos, misspellings, etc. that will disqualify voters affect those with foreign names, esp. Asian and Arabic.