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First, this is a way for George W. Bush to try to suppress the vote in Ohio. Secondly, in this state, all voters are required to present valid identification in order to vote. House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, is leading the charge, by sending the letter to Bush to probe the matter.

President George W. Bush late Friday asked Attorney General Michael Mukasey to investigate whether hundreds of thousands of newly registered voters in the battleground state of Ohio would have to verify the information on their voter registration forms or be given provisional ballots, an issue the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on last week. The unprecedented intervention by the White House less than two weeks before the presidential election may result in at least 200,000 voters in Ohio not being able to vote on Election Day if they are forced to provide additional identification when they head to the polls. “I strongly urge you to direct Attorney General Mukasey and the Department of Justice to act.” Boehner said in his letter “Unless action is taken by the Department immediately, thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands of names whose information has not been verified through the [Help America Vote Act] procedures mandated by Congress will remain on the voter rolls during the November 4 election; and there is a significant risk if not a certainty, that unlawful votes will be cast and counted. Given the Election Day is less than two weeks away, immediate action by the Department is not only warranted, but also crucial.” Independent studies have shown that phony registrations rarely result in illegally cast ballots because there are so many other safeguards built into the system. For instance, from October 2002 to September 2005, a total of 70 people were convicted for federal election related crimes, according to figures compiled by the New York Times last year. Only 18 of those were for ineligible voting. In recent years, federal prosecutors reached similar conclusions despite pressure from the Bush administration to lodge “election fraud” charges against voter registration groups seen as bringing more Democratic voters into the democratic process. Some of the Bush administration prosecutors who refused to seek these indictments were then fired in 2006 as part of a purge of nine U.S. Attorneys deemed not “loyal Bushies.”

Governor Strickland will hopefully, put his foot down on all these false allegations and tell President Bush to go take a flying leap. The Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has worked hard to correct all the problems this state was having with the previous Republican Administration and the past election fraud they perpetuated.

Update: In reference to previous Republican Administration, Ohio had former Republican Ken Blackwell as Secretary of State.

Blackwell gained national prominence for his dual roles as Chief Elections Official of Ohio and honorary co-chair of the “Committee to re-elect George W. Bush” during the 2004 election. Allegations of conflict of interest and voter disenfranchisement led to the filing of at least sixteen related lawsuits naming Blackwell. Blackwell appealed the decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. On October 26, 2004 the Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed in part and reversed in part. The court agreed with the plaintiffs and the District Court that Blackwell’s directive violated HAVA to the extent that it empowered poll workers to withhold a provisional ballot based on their “on-the-spot determination at the polling place”.

Update II: CommonDreams article about Ken Blackwell and the problems Ohio had, in the past, with his voter disenfranchisement: Will Ken Blackwell Find the Ways to Steal Ohio 2006 as He Did in 2004?

As election day approaches, Blackwell’s dirty tricks sink ever deeper. Blackwell is now using “push polls” made infamous by Karl Rove. True to form, child molestation charges are front and center. He has also escalated the mass disenfranchisement of Ohio voters, trashing the ballots of some ten percent of absentee voters. He has eliminated the state-wide ballot initiative meant to save workers rights and wages. He’s even tried to strike the Democratic gubernatorial nominee from the ballot altogether. All of which could affect not only his race for governor, but key U.S. Senate and House races as well. Blackwell is using Rove’s notoriously deceptive push poll device to spread an unsubstantiated smear against his Democratic gubernatorial opponent, Ted Strickland. This year Blackwell will count the votes in his own race for governor, in the crucial U.S. Senate race between GOP incumbant Mike DeWine versus Congressman Sherrod Brown, and in a number of cricital House races hotly contested for the first time in years. As he does so, Blackwell is conducting the largest purge of voter rolls since the apartheid nightmare of the post-Reconstruction Jim Crow south.

For the full article at TPR.