Supreme Court Pimpslaps GOP; Leaves a Mark

The nation's Big Court today handed down a decision that the state GOP of Ohio, challenging voter registrations that had different driver's license numbers or social security numbers and demanding a system of pre-verification under the Help America Vote Act, had no standing to sue and to shut the hell up.

The head of the Ohio GOP today was outraged, saying that the ruling didn't reach the merits, only whether the group had standing to sue. I know how it must feel, knowing that you have to follow the law and being reminded of that by the Supreme Court. Must be very difficult to get over this slight. Compliance with basic law of the land - like having standing to bring a lawsuit - is quite difficult I hear. But I'm no lawyer. However, I played one in the Lifetime Network Red Carpet Movie Event: "Standing to Sue: The Ohio GOP Story." I was also an extra in "Mother, May I Sleep With Danger" and played an orderly on one episode of "Army Wives."

Fact is, this could be looked at as another nail in the GOP coffin - but the question is, do they have a legitimate beef on the merits? There were discrepancies in 200,000 of the over 600,000 new registrations apparently. Wow. That's a lot. But these errors are being attributed to just clerical mistakes, like misspellings, abbreviations or just not copying down addresses or social security numbers correctly. So says the Ohio Secretary of State. Now, this does seem a little suspicious to me... one mistake in three? Well, until I remember every trip I have ever taken to any DMV in the country. For several years, my name was "Fat Bateman" in college, and if you think those years didn't leave a scar, you're wrong, pal. The people doing these transcriptions are paid by the hour - if at all. They are not getting Genius Grants. Mostly because they are not geniuses. The fact that the names or addresses are written down wrong is not tantamount to fraud... stupidity, maybe. Actually, more than likely. But I would concede that it is suspicious at the level of one in three. That seems a high degree of incompetence, even for people from Cleveland.

Suspicious, however, only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Not one instance of outright fraud was demonstrated (not ONE) by the GOP in any court filing, so, frankly, the GOP was lucky the merits weren't reached and only their standing to sue was bitchslapped. The Ohio GOP could not show one iota of damage nor one scintilla of motive. Fact is that these people haven't voted, haven't shown up to vote - haven't done anything at all except register. They haven't even demonstrated their ELIGIBILITY to vote yet. Just filled out a placeholder.

The decision is not the story here, sports fans. The urgency with which the GOP approached this situation is the real tale and should demonstrate their level of fear. The Secretary of State of Ohio, in response to the level of discrepancy, has already set up a system of verification that each voter will have to go through before casting a ballot. That's right... there is already a system of verification built in. So what the hell was the GOP suing to accomplish? The GOP demanded more - essentially, pre-verification. Permission to even show up on election day if someone wrote down your middle name "Alan" rather than "Allan." That's a pretty stiff standard, even for those sticklers in the GOP, who do everything by the book if memory serves from the last eight years. Do you smell that? Smells like desperation. Also, bacon. But mostly desperation.