Supreme Court Sides with Ohio Dems

Here's the ruling from the Supreme Court that came out today regarding voter registration in Ohio, courtesy of Bloomberg:

The U.S. Supreme Court, siding with Democrats, freed Ohio officials from a lower court order that might have limited participation by new voters in next month's presidential election.

Today's ruling means Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, doesn't have to provide county election boards with lists of new registrants whose information doesn't match up with government databases. A federal trial judge had ordered Brunner to supply the lists by today.

Republicans who sued Brunner "are not sufficiently likely to prevail'' in their lawsuit, the Supreme Court said in a two- page order, which came without published dissent.

Brunner said the judge's order could have affected as many as 200,000 Ohioans, potentially forcing them to cast provisional ballots instead of regular ballots. Democrats likely would have been disproportionately affected by the judge's order because of the party's efforts to register new voters this year.

The Ohio Republican Party accused Brunner of ignoring her duty under a federal law to help weed out fraudulent registrations. The dispute was one of several fights that have made Ohio a center of legal controversy leading up to the Nov. 4 election.

This is surely a big win for the Democrats and will save them a lot of trouble, but I don't think that it will make a big difference in the outcome of the race in Ohio. But who knows.