Okay, so if you have not been following this story, the 6th Circuit trial court originally issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) against Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner requiring her to do her job. Namely, ensuring that the registration forms received from groups such as ACORN and others are legit. Brunner had essentially said that she wasn’t going to bother to alert local election boards when the state received suspicious or fraudulent registration forms. So, the 6th Circuit originally ruled that she did indeed have to share this information.

Then, a 3 panel Appellate Court over-turned the Trial court stating that Brunner didn’t have to do this, it was a head scratching opinion, but TROs are troublesome because you have to show, among other things, that you are likely to prevail on the merits lately, a somewhat burdensome standard. Then the 6th Circuit decided to hear the TRO en banc, or the full 9th Circuit. This time they ruled 9-6 to reinstate the TRO against Brunner. Among other things, the Court ruled:

“So far as this record is concerned, the Secretary has given no tenable exlanation why her current interpretation of the statute, as opposed to the office’s prior implementation of the law, remotely furthers the anti-fraud objective of the law.”

The court mocks Brunner’s defense as “[t]he bureaucrats’ lament - that this will be difficult to do.”

The last part is particularly funny, they “mock” Brunner’s defense that the job she has been tasked to do, namely ensure that federal and state election laws be followed, is too difficult. Essentially the Court also rules that Brunner is in violation of Federal law. The “Help America Vote Act” (HAVA), requires that state officials must share information from databases that they keep regarding voter registration. That is what is particularly shameful in Brunner’s case. The information was readily available, but she refused to share it with local units, thus she gets slammed by the Court. It seems pretty clear both by her actions and the ruling of the Court that her main reason for not doing so, is because she is a partisan hack and these actions help Democrats and Obama.

Here is a link to the ruling if you should like to read it.