Yeah, what's up with that?

Given the Republican leaning of the Supreme Court, the Ohio Republican party will be hard pressed to call this move "activist".

The Ohio Solicitor General's office did a lot of the heavy lifting in this case, as they normally do. Props to them!

I can't find in three stories now the tally of the their vote, i.e 5 to 4, 7 to 2. Anyone know?

@4--it was unanimous. 9-0. They ruled that the OH Republicans had no right to bring the suit under federal law. My friend, the OH solicitor general, said: "Unanimous per curiam opinions are rare."

YES! Ohio will NOT fuck the election up this time! Thankfully, Kenneth Blackwell is gone as well!

Why is it such a ridiculous idea to have some national standards for elections, including how to register people, how to collect their votes, and how to count them accurately. Our democracy suffers because each state is allowed to come up with their own system, which are riddled with flaws. How about a non-partisan commission to develop across the board voting rules that promote fair and democratic elections. Call me crazy.

They were against it before they were for it.

Maybe George Bush's presidency convinced them of the errors of their ways.

It was the wise Federalist thing to do.

Just for the record they did NOT come down on the side of democracy-they just said the Republicans had no standing to sue on the matter. They made no judgements on the merits of the suit or lack thereof.

Right result, wrong reason.

@7, every state thinks it is doing setting rules to promote fair and democratic elections. There are real trade-offs between convenience, security, cost, etc. If we had federal rules we'd have all the same problems, but writ large.

@11, I've read slightly mixed stories on that. I just read somewhere that the ruling was that the group that brought the complaint wasn't sufficiently likely to win to allow it to be heard, since it wasn't a party that had standing under the law. That is, yes, it was mostly a technicality, but apparently if they'd really thought the case was likely to win they could have made an exception and heard it anyway.

Even if the ruling was on a technicality, I am pleased it was unanimous. It's hard to accuse Scalia of being a Democratic hack who will do anything to advance the Democratic party.

Oh, and the really funny bit is that under the complaint the Republicans made, Joe the Plumber would have been disenfranchised, or at least made to cast a "provisional" ballot. According to the Wall Street Journal, his last name is spelled wrong on the voter registration rolls.