The ACLU will continue to monitor this process to ensure that voters are not purged from lists simply because of typographic errors or other data problems.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is completing a plan to address a lingering controversy from the 2008 general election in Ohio that generated national attention, lawsuits and even death threats.

Brunner expects to issue a directive soon detailing what county boards of elections must do when the name or other personal information provided by a voter doesn’t match state or federal records after an automatic computer check.

Preliminary guidelines call for counties to mail a notice to voters whose information doesn’t match so the voters can update their records. That raises concerns among some county officials about the cost and possible voter confusion.

“I’ll send the phone calls to your office,” one county elections official told Brunner after hearing details of the plan at the Ohio Association of Election Officials’ Winter Conference in Columbus last month.

The Ohio House passed an elections reform package that could make several improvements to the state’s election system. The bill still needs approval from the Senate and signed by the Governor.

The Ohio House passed a bill today over Republican objections to make sweeping changes to how elections are run in Ohio, including expanding the number of sites a county can offer for early-absentee voting.

House Bill 260 passed the Democrat-controlled House 53-45 and now moves to the GOP-led Senate, where its future is uncertain. The Senate has been considering its own elections bill, Senate Bill 8.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat who supports the House bill and convened two summits to consider changes after the 2008 election, observed the vote personally in the House gallery.

The DDN posits how the sale of Diebold to Premier Election Systems may impact the voting rights of Ohioans.

The company that makes voting machines used in Montgomery, Greene, Miami, Darke and Butler counties has sold that operation to the company that makes the machines used in all the other counties in the Miami Valley: Warren, Preble, Clark, Champaign, Shelby and Clinton.

On the surface, that doesn’t sound like a great thing. The big get bigger. Less competition.

In this case, however, there’s good news.

The hyper-controversial Diebold Inc. makes the touch-screen, ATM-like machines used in the first group of counties. In recent years, it changed the name of its election-machine subsidiary to Premier Election Solutions Inc. and has taken a hands-off approach. But the machines are still associated with Diebold.

Ohio Democrats have put forth a new set of proposals to reform the state’s election system.

Ohio voters would be able to vote early at more locations — but for a shorter time — and would encounter simpler voter identification requirements under legislation House Democrats plan to introduce Tuesday.

The wide-ranging elections bill is the culmination of months of discussions following the 2008 presidential election, which largely went smoothly but was still marked by partisan bickering. A measure with some of the same provisions introduced by Republican lawmakers at the end of 2008 was vetoed by Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland, who said it was pushed with haste.

In an interview Monday with The Associated Press, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said early voting would begin 20 days before Election Day and end the weekend prior so local officials have time to prepare. Voters in each county would have the option of choosing from as many as four early voting sites instead of one.