Bush seeks review of Ohio issue

By MARY PAT FLAHERTY

Washington Post

WASHINGTON — The White House has asked the Department of Justice to look into whether 200,000 new Ohio voters must reconfirm their registration information before Nov. 4, taking up an issue that Republicans and Democrats in the battleground state have been fighting over in court for weeks.

The voter names are in dispute because their registration information conflicts with other official data.

The action comes a week after the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a case brought by the Ohio Republican Party over the same issue. Republicans have argued that the mismatched information could signal fraudulent registrations, but Democrats have countered that eligible voters could be knocked off the rolls over discrepancies as minor as a transposed number in an address or birthdate.

President Bush asked Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey on Friday to review concerns over the voters raised by House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, R-Ohio.

Boehner wrote to Bush on Friday, saying, “I strongly urge you to direct Attorney General Mukasey and the Department of Justice to act.” Boehner said in his letter that if the voters remain on the rolls without added checks, “there is a significant risk, if not a certainty, that unlawful votes will be cast and counted.”

In a news release, Boehner said that a letter he had sent Monday to Mukasey on the matter did not receive a reply. Boehner has asked Mukasey to order Ohio’s Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner to make it easier for county elections officials to access the state list of mismatched voters.

White House press secretary Dana Perino characterized Bush’s referral of the matter to Justice as a routine step that would be taken for any such request from a congressional leader.