DOJ Rejects GOP Request for Federal Intervention in Voter Registration Dispute

The New York Times blog "The Caucus" reports that the GOP has failed in its latest attempt to strong-arm Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner:

The Department of Justice will not require Ohio to disclose the names of voters whose registration applications did not match other government databases, according to two people familiar with discussions between state and federal lawyers. ...

Ohio Republicans had sought the lists to challenge voters, but the Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, refused the request, saying that numerical errors or misspellings are the probable reason for most of the discrepancies. ...

... The Justice Department has been in contact with Ohio election officials since early October and this week its lawyers determined they would not pursue litigation before the election, according to the sources familiar with the discussions.

The post also notes that "[m]ost studies by non-partisan groups have found little evidence that voter fraud is a wide-scale problem or that fraudulent or duplicate voter registration applications lead to ineligible voters casting ballots," which ties in nicely with a report in the Columbus Dispatch earlier today that "experts say a large percentage of mismatches are the result of human error and not fraud -- and that the matching process should not be used to disqualify voters."

In short, the Ohio Republican Party's hysterical flailing at Brunner for "concealing evidence" and "facilitating voter fraud" is pernicious nonsense and little more than a smokescreen for voter suppression.