Supreme Court throws out Ohio Republicans' election lawsuit

The high court, in a brief opinion, said the federal law that called for computer checks of new voters did not authorize private lawsuits to enforce it.

The ruling is a victory for Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat. She said she feared "chaos" on election day if the GOP were permitted last-minute challenges to new voters based on data on file with the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

Ohio, always a closely contested state, has seen more than 600,000 new registered voters this year. Brunner said she feared that as many as 200,000 of them could be challenged and forced to file provisional ballots if there were a mismatch between the information on their voter registration cards and the data on file with the DMV.

One example came to light this week. Joseph Wurzelbacher, or "Joe the Plumber," became a celebrated figure in the third debate between John McCain and Barack Obama. But several Ohio newspapers said his name is misspelled as "Worzelbacher" in the state's records. That mismatch could have led to his being challenged at the polls if he had been a newly registered voter.

The state GOP sued Brunner last month and asserted that her office had not complied with the federal Help America Voter Act. It says the state election chief must set up a computerized system that allows for checking new voters with the state DMV records. County officials want to see, for example, if the address of the new voter matches the address on file with the state.

Brunner said Ohio had complied with that requirement. But the GOP lawsuit said her office should print out a list of "mismatches" for all 88 counties in Ohio.

In response, Brunner said it would be troublesome to reprogram the state's computers at this late stage. However, a federal judge ordered her to make the change, and the U.S. court of appeals in Cincinnati upheld that order in a 10-6 vote.

All the judges in the majority except one were Republican appointees. All the dissenters were nominated by Democrats.

It was unclear what would have been done with the list of "mismatches." The appeals court judges said it would not have knocked voters off the rolls, but would simply have allowed officials to check further to make sure the voters were who they said they were.

Democrats and liberal activists said they feared a move to block new voters from casting ballots.

Earlier this week, Brunner filed an emergency appeal in the Supreme Court, asking the justices to block the GOP suit. "The Help American Vote Act was enacted to protect the voting rights of all Americans, not to deny eligible voters their basic right to vote," she said.

In today's order, the court said it was not deciding who was right on the question of whether the federal law required a county-by-county list of mismatches. But the justices agreed with Brunner that the federal measure did not give the GOP a right to sue.

david.savage@latimes.com