Irony in the GOP v. Brunner Legal Battle

Yesterday, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner filed two pleadings in the Ohio Supreme Court. The first was a notice of removal in which she notified the Ohio Supreme Court that she was asking the Federal District Court to take jurisdiction over the lawsuit filed by David Myhal. The second was her answer in the Ohio Supreme Court.

In Brunner's answer is the following, which is rich in irony:

"12. Respondent states that the Relator spelled his name differently in the caption of the complaint as compared to the rest of the complaint. One presumes that this is an innocent typographical error. Respondent, however, is unsure if the actual Relator in this case is "David Mahal" as listed in the caption or "David Myhal" as listed in the body of the complaint. Respondent denies for lack of knowledge the allegations in Paragraph 9 of the Complaint." (Italics in the original.)

It is the italicized part of paragraph 12 of Brunner's answer that is ironic. The GOP is trying to argue that the local Boards of Elections should be notified by Brunner of any mismatches in data with the BMV records or Social Security. Presumably the list of such voters would then be public record. The GOP could then get the names of such voters and use that information to engage in typical GOP voter suppression stuff. (That idea, by the way, isn't original with us. We got it from an article that appeared in AlterNet.)

One of the arguments that Brunner has used against the GOP's request is that a lot of errors in voter databases are unintentional and result not from voters giving inaccurate information, but from typographical and other errors made by Boards of Elections workers. So here we have a typographical error in a complaint filed by a very well known and well regarded Columbus law firm in the Ohio Supreme Court. Filed on behalf of a person who is claiming that mismatches between Ohio election data and data from Ohio's BMV or Social Security Administration could be nefarious. We can only imagine the glee it gave Brunner's attorneys to make that discovery.