This might be what you heard about - just got settled:
Ohio Court Rules for McCain-Palin on Absentee Ballots
Updated 5:35 p.m.
By Mary Pat Flaherty
The Ohio Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that disputed absentee ballot applications mailed to state voters by the McCain-Palin campaign should be accepted by local elections officials and directed State Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner to reverse her position that boards reject them.
The decision was one of several issued this week by state and federal courts over procedures that affect Ohio's early voting process.
The case was brought by two Republican voters against Brunner, a Democrat, and had become the focus of partisan wrangling in the heavily contested state.
The applications at issue in Thursday's case contain a checkbox that appears on the forms -- in addition to a signature line -- for voters to state that they are qualified to vote and request an absentee ballot. The McCain camp mailed 1 million of the forms in Ohio.
In September, Brunner advised county elections boards to reject the forms if the box was not checked, even if the application had been signed, saying that without a checkmark a voter's intent was unclear. More than 3,500 ballots already had been rejected for that reason by boards, the court determined.
The court rejected Brunner's interpretation and also said that an unchecked box did not provide evidence of voter fraud. Rejecting ballots solely over the lack of a checkmark, the court wrote, served "no vital purpose or public interest."
The court was obliged to avoid "unduly technical interpretations" of election law, its order stated.
Brunner said she was "pleased" the court clarified what she called a set of "complex applications ruled" passed by the state legislature. "I will gladly follow the high court's decision," she said.
The McCain campaign cheered the ruling. "Today's decision is a win for the tens of thousands of voters whose absentee ballots were threatened as a result of Secretary of State Brunner's decision to add confusion to what should be an honest and open election process. These qualified voters are now assured that they will not be disenfranchised by Secretary Brunner's partisan attempt to keep John McCain's supporters from casting absentee ballots," said Jon Seaton, McCain-Palin Regional Campaign Manager for Seaton, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
On Monday, the day before early voting opened in Ohio, Brunner's office won several court cases in which Republican voters and the state GOP had asked state and federal courts to stop the process because it permitted voters to register and cast absentee ballots at the same time.
The one-stop voting stemmed from a directive Brunner issued based on a unique overlap between when absentee ballots became available in the state and the close of voter registration a week later.
Ohio this year allows voters to cast absentee ballots without providing an excuse as to why they will not be present on Election Day -- and that change has led to a steady get-out-the-vote effort during the one-stop overlap period, which ends Oct. 6.
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