By Carter Clews
Rarely can a long-drawn, legal opinion rendered by a United States Court of Appeals be something most of us would consider “fun reading.”
But, even more rarely can such a decision — aimed directly at a sitting Secretary of State — be summed up in just three words: “You’re an idiot.”
Such was the 9-6 decision proffered by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in the case of Ohio Republican Party v. Jennifer Brunner.
Ms. Brunner is the Democrat Secretary of State for (or, depending upon your take on democracy, against) the sovereign state of Ohio. In recent days, she has clearly assumed that the first obligation of her office is to assist ACORN and Barack Obama in corrupting the state’s electoral process. How else to explain her complicity in covering up 200,000 unmatchable voter registrations aimed at skewing (to put it mildly) the upcoming presidential election?
Ms. Brunner, for her part, made it clear that she intended to sit on the fraudulent registrations until it was far too late to review their authenticity. She deemed it “essential” that her 200,000 newly registered, unverifiable voters “are left inviolate to vote a regular ballot on or before Election Day.” And, if that just happens to violate the bedrock precepts of a free and fair election … well, in Ms. Brunner’s opinion, that’s just the price we have to pay to put Barack Obama in the White House.
You see, Ms. Brunner may not be the brightest light in the chandelier, but she can add and subtract. She knows that in Ohio in 2000, George Bush beat Al Gore by 165,019 votes. And in 2004, George Bush beat John Kerry by 136,484. Soooo, if Ms. Brunner can assure Mr. Obama 200,000 fraudulent votes … let’s just say that Her Ladyship can start picking out her Inaugural Ball gown before the first, meaningless Buckeye vote is even counted.
Hence, we see Ms. Brunner back-flipping, sidestepping, playing (one would hope) dumb, and turning the entire electoral process on its head to make certain local election boards have no way in the world to protect the sanctity of the franchise. “It is imperative that voters not be disenfranchised because of red tape…technical information … or glitches,” she intones. All of which, in Ms. Brunner’s unencumbered mind, apparently include whether or not a person really exists.
Which may explain why in a recent Rasmussen poll a paltry 53 percent of Ohioans expect a fair election. Thanks, Jennifer.
So, everything was hunky-dory for Madame Secretary – until the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals came raining down on her Inaugural Parade. And rain they did … in no uncertain terms … as in “You’re an idiot.” It’s all there, in black and white here for your reading enjoyment.
Still, realizing that you may not have time right now to actually sit down and languidly peruse this fun-filled document, let me highlight the juicier passages for you.
Ms. Brunner’s first line of defense for refusing to provide local election boards with the unmatched registrations is that she is under no legal obligation under the Help America Vote Act to come up with a “user friendly” system for verification. The Court responds:
“As far as we can tell, the problem with the current system [Ms. Brunner’s] is not that it is insufficiently user-friendly, but that it is ineffectively useless.”
Please note the full impact of those last two words. Clearly sensing that Ms. Brunner may be a bit obtuse, the learned jurists try to help her understand how mortally flawed her system is by terming it not merely “ineffective,” it is also “useless.” Nah, you’re right: she probably still didn’t get it. But, that’s all right, because the Court was just getting warmed up.
Her Ladyship, it seems, had two options to choose from as to how she would provide election boards requisite access to the questionable registration. Apparently, either might have been sufficient. So, no doubt considering herself Solomonesque, she decided to split the difference.
And the Court didn’t buy it:
“She adopts option one in the main but then borrows from option two by conceding that she must provide ‘access’ to the data containing evidence of the mismatches. Only then does she draw a line found nowhere in the statute – that the county board must be given access; they just need not be giving meaningful access. Call that interpretation what you will, but it is hardly a construction of the law mandated by its ‘plain language.’”
In short, “You’re an idiot.” And, yet, there’s more.
Ms. Brunner then figured that the real way to work her will with the empanelled judges was to fall back on the old, tried and untrue, “poor little old me” poppycock. As in, “You see, your honor, there are only so many hours in the day, and I’m kind of short-staffed as it is, and Glady’s cat had kittens, so she can’t work late, and you know old Bill has a drinking problem, so you can’t rely on him at all, and – oh by gosh, by golly – what’s a girl to do?”
Here’s how the Court disposed of that unmitigated hogwash right from the get-go:
“She raises two burdens: that it will be difficult for her office to develop a computer program to get access to this information and that any changes to the SWVRD at this late stage in the election risk creating other problems in the electoral process. But why all of this is so is never explained, much less supported by affidavits from the Secretary or her office.”
That’s kind of a nice way of saying, “Look, Madame Einstein, you’ve walked in here totally unprepared, and now you expect us to take your sappy excuses at face value. Get a life.”
And now comes my personal favorite sentence in the entire decision. It’s so good, in fact, that I promise not to even elaborate. You ready? Here you go:
“The bureaucrat’s lament – that this will be difficult to do – is a hard sell given that the Secretary previously shared this kind of information with county boards.”
I know I promised not to comment on that one. But it’s just too sweet not to savor. “The bureaucrat’s lament – that this will be difficult to do” … Now, I ask you: Aren’t those the exact same words you have, at least on one occasion and probably more, wanted to spew forth at some slow-motion postal employee, MVA “working vagrant,” or disembodied bureaucratic voice at the other end of the phone when you’ve just been told for the umpteenth time, “Well, that’s not what we do at this office”? Thank you, Your Honor. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And may I quote you on that?
I could go on (for example, you’ll love the section where the judges deem Jennifer’s record “ear-splittingly silent,” or when they suggest to her that “allowing potentially fraudulent votes to be forever counted” might be a “key risk”). But, by now, I think you get the full, pungent flavor of the Sixth Circuit Court’s response to Secretary of State Brunner’s hapless, hopeless attempt to provide legal cover for her voter fraud complicity. The august judges knew what she was up to, they didn’t take kindly to it, and they wanted to make dead sure she understood.
Will she? I doubt it. But think if it this way: If there is a bright, silver lining to the dense, dark cloud Ms. Brunner attempted to form over the state of Ohio, it is that her shameless shenanigans could one day save the good people of that state a lot of time and costly effort. For, one of these days, when some tiny Ohio town finds itself without a village idiot, they will now know exactly where to look.
Carter Clews is the Executive Editor of ALG News Bureau.
