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Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking for intervention into the state’s dispute over voter eligibility verification, the AP reports. The 6th U.S. Court of Appeals earlier this week ordered Brunner’s office to establish a system of verification that would match driver’s license numbers or Social Security numbers with new voter applications, something the state Republican Party had asked for.

Over 650,000 new registrations have been turned into the state since January and Brunner’s office say about 200,000 of them have mismatched data. But Brunner says there are multiple reasons why applications may be mismatched and said that a new process of verification could lead to disenfranchising voters. “If the Sixth Circuit's decision is allowed to stand, an untold number of legitimate voters in Ohio will be forced to re-establish
the bona fides of their vote before the county boards of elections, or they will stay home out of frustration or confusion," Brunner wrote in her appeal.

Meanwhile, the AP also reports that the FBI is investigating ACORN’s role in voter registration fraud complaints in states across the nation. A law enforcement source told the wire service that the FBI is looking through the results of several raids on ACORN offices in various states to find out if there has been a “coordinated national scam.”

This analysis was written by Anthony Salvanto, CBS News’ manager of surveys

Iowa and New Hampshire did more than kick off this year’s presidential races. Their contests this winter drew thousands of first-time voters, and spurred thousands more to switch party registration, in numbers that heavily favored the Democrats.

In a presidential election that may be close, they could play pivotal roles for the second time this year. Could new voters put these states - each of which was a toss-up in ’04 - squarely into the blue column now?

Here’s a look at how the changes have shaken up their electorates – and could make a difference this November. The challenge for Obama and the Democrats is whether they can capitalize on having won the “interest primary” by drawing and registering more of their voters last winter.

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As polls continue to show Barack Obama maintaining a double-digit lead over Hillary Clinton in the May 6 North Carolina primary, The Associated Press reports that voter registration among blacks is soaring in the Tar Heel State.

Blacks have traditionally accounting for about a third of all voters in past North Carolina Democratic primaries, but Clyde Frazier, a professor of political science at Meredith College in Raleigh, told the AP, "I think everybody's expecting it to be higher than that this year."

The AP reports that over 45,000 blacks registered to vote in the first three months of this year, while about 106,000 whites signed up to vote during the same period. Those numbers are both way up from 2004, when just over 11,000 blacks and 47,000 whites registered during the first quarter of that year, but the percentage increase of new black registrants was much higher than new whites.

If Obama continues to generate the kind of enthusiasm among black voters he has garnered in other southern primaries, North Carolina looks to be his state to lose.