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From the Associated Press:

The Supreme Court is siding with Ohio's top
elections official in a dispute with the state Republican Party over voter registrations.

The justices on Friday overruled a federal appeals court that had ordered Ohio's top elections official to do more to help counties verify voter eligibility.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, faced a deadline of Friday to set up a system to provide local officials with names of newly registered voters whose driver's license numbers or Social Security numbers on voter registration forms don't match records in other government databases.

Ohio Republicans contended the information for counties would help prevent fraud. Brunner said the GOP is trying to disenfranchise voters.

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.”

Some new polls out over the past couple of days yield some interesting results in some key battleground states. In Ohio, a new Suffolk University poll shows John McCain with a slim lead in the all-important Buckeye State. Among likely voters, McCain led 46 percent to 42 percent in the poll.

Meanwhile, a new Des Moines Register poll shows Obama with a commanding 52 percent to 40 percent lead in Iowa, where Obama’s march to the nomination began. And in Minnesota, a Minneapolis Star Tribune poll has the race tied at 45 percent each. A Star Tribune poll last May showed Obama with a 13-point lead.

After a flood of national polls this week which have established that John McCain came out of the convention crunch at the very least even with Barack Obama for the first time, if not slightly ahead. It’s September, less than eight weeks from Election Day and polls are beginning to take on more importance as a gauge of the race.

Of course those national polls are unimportant compared to those being conducted state-by-state where the election will be decided. There’s a new wave of those out today from two news organizations that paint a similar picture of a very tight race.

McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin and the rallying of the traditional conservative base appears to have given the senator a boost in some of those red states which the Obama campaign has targeted. In Virginia, a new CNN/Time magazine poll has McCain up 50 percent to 46 percent, while another poll by the same shows him leading in Missouri by a similar 50 percent to 45 percent margin. In Florida, a new Quinnipiac poll has McCain up even more, 50 percent to 43 percent.

But there are troubling signs for McCain in the state of Ohio, which played such a pivotal role in re-electing President Bush in 2004. A Quinnipiac poll there has Obama leading 49 percent to 44 percent. Quinnipiac also has Obama up by a slim 48 percent to 45 percent margin in Pennsylvania while CNN/Time has him leading McCain in New Hampshire 51 percent to 45 percent and up 49 percent to 45 percent in Michigan.

For all the excitement generated by the Palin pick among Republicans, these polls numbers should be have a cooling effect. It’s encouraging for McCain that in two big “blue” states – Pennsylvania and Michigan – remain highly competitive. Pulling either of them into the GOP column would highly complicate Obama’s path to the White House. But losing Ohio, so vital to GOP hopes in the past, would make winning one of those other large states essential.

The Buckeye State is where Hillary Clinton scored a big but too-late victory in the primary season and where questions about Obama’s ability to attract those white, blue-collar, Reagan Democrats started really being raised. His lead in Ohio at this point in the campaign is perhaps the most significant of all these polling results.

Of course there will be plenty more polls out in the coming days and weeks, each one given more import than the last. In the meantime, check out our Ways To Win interactive map and plot your own path to the presidency for both candidates.

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A new Barack Obama ad in Ohio is taking aim at John McCain for his involvement in a deal by foreign-based shipping company DHL that threatens thousands of jobs in Ohio. “In Washington, John McCain helped pave the way for foreign-owned DHL to take over an American shipping company. McCain’s campaign manager was lead lobbyist for the deal. Now, thousands of Ohio jobs at risk,” the ad states. Watch it:



The McCain campaign responded to the ad with a FactCheck.org analysis of similar ads run by the Obama campaign and labor groups in Ohio. “We can't judge people's motives, but we've seen no evidence to suggest that McCain's activities were directed at helping DHL do anything at all. And certainly we've seen nothing to suggest that McCain 'turned his back on' Wilmington's workers,” the analysis states.

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The latest Quinnipiac Swing State poll shows Barack Obama with strong support in three of the most critical battleground states.

According to the poll, Obama has a double-digit lead in Pennsylvania (52 percent to 40 percent), a solid edge in Ohio (48 percent to 42 percent) and is even ahead in Florida (47 percent to 43 percent), a state where many observers have assumed McCain would have the advantage.

It's still too early to put much credence in general election polls, but the Quinnipiac Poll is notable for the fact that just last week, Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe made the case at a private fundraiser that the presumptive Democratic nominee does not even need to win the decisive battlegrounds in 2000 and 2004—Florida and Ohio—in order to reach the magic number of 270 electoral votes.

Appearing on NPR's "All Things Considered," Ohio Governor Ted Strickland unequivocally ruled out being Barack Obama's running mate, The Washington Post reports.

Hailing from one of the most important swing states, Strickland had been one of the most talked about VP possibilities for Obama, but asked if he is auditioning for the job, he was Shermanesque in ruling it out.

"Absolutely not. If drafted I will not run, nominated I will not accept and if elected I will not serve. So, I don’t know how more crystal clear I can be," he said.

Strickland is expected to join Obama when the presumptive Democratic nominee stumps in Ohio on Friday.

Hillary Clinton did something last night she had not been able to do since New Hampshire – stop Barack Obama’s momentum in the Democratic primary contest. Or at least blunt it.

By winning three out of the four primary contests Tuesday night, Clinton almost certainly saved her campaign to fight on in a contest that now looks likely to stretch at least another seven weeks - until Pennsylvania votes.

Clinton can now boast of two more wins in big states, having carried Ohio and Texas (as well as Rhode Island), but she did nothing to erase Obama's sizeable delegate lead. In fact, she may have lost ground by the time all the delegates are awarded.

It's hard to see a path to the 2,025 delegate threshold needed to win the nomination for either candidate without the support of a sizable number of super delegates. So, the argument will rage on, muddied enormously by last night's results.

Despite the fact that Clinton once held enormous leads in Texas and Ohio, Obama came roaring into the evening on the precipice of ending the contest. The winner of 12 straight contests, he repeated his pattern of erasing those big leads. But, unlike big wins in Virginia, Maryland and Wisconsin, Obama couldn't get over the top and seal the deal.

"We're going on, we're going strong and we're going all the way," Clinton said in Ohio Tuesday night. "We're just getting started." Coming into the night, the New York Senator was expected to face increased pressure from party leaders and insiders to exit the race if she failed to win the two big states at stake. Now that she has - and added Rhode Island to boot - where such pressure would come from is less clear.

Obama's campaign argues that this is less a race about winning states and more about winning delegates. But winning pledged delegates alone probably won't get him the nomination, as long as Clinton remains in the race, splitting the haul to the end.

The recent sharpening of the argument Clinton has pressed, along with outside events, may have helped her stem the tide. Her campaign in Texas launched a much-discussed ad raising questions about Obama's readiness to handle a crisis as president. Obama's campaign got caught up in a series of revised statements about what one of his economic advisers said to a Canadian official about NAFTA. Meanwhile, the trial of Chicago developer Tony Rezko, a former Obama supporter, thrust that issue back into the headlines.

Whether any of these developments mattered to voters in Texas and Ohio is unclear, but they marked the first time Obama had entered such an important contest while facing tough questions. Having won a variety of states with large margins since Super Tuesday, it's fair to say Democrats last night may have cumulatively expressed some buyer's hesitation.

Here are some data from the early CBS News exit polls:

The economy was the top issue for Democratic voters in all four states voting today, and large majorities say the economy is in bad shape.

Ohio Democratic voters hold mostly negative views on U.S. trade with other countries: Eight in ten say trade takes jobs away from their state. In Texas, 58 percent say trade takes jobs away, while a quarter say U.S. trade with other countries creates jobs.

Thirty-two percent of Texas Democratic primary voters are Hispanic, according to the early exit polls -– up from the 24 percent in 2004. Eighteen percent are black, down from 21 percent in 2004.

In Ohio, 20 percent of Democratic primary voters are African American, up from 14 percent in 2004.

Obama is seen by voters in Texas and Ohio as the candidate most likely to beat the Republican nominee in November. A larger percentage of voters in both states say Clinton has attacked Obama unfairly than the other way around.

In both Ohio and Texas, a majority of Democratic voters say superdelegates should cast their vote based on the results of the primaries. A third say the superdelegates should support the candidate who has the best chance of winning in November.

For more exit poll results, see our main election story.

A quick glance at this afternoon's Doppler radar map of Ohio shows a rainbow of snow, ice and rain across most of the state. So, what does that mean for the primary? Who knows.

As CBS News senior political correspondent Jeff Greenfield pointed out on The Early Show this morning, it can be a futile endeavor to guess who (if anyone) might benefit at the polls when Mother Nature has a bad day.

Whether or not any candidate has benefited, the 2008 campaign has seen its fair share of strange weather on voting days.

New Hampshire voters who typically bundle up in layers on primary days were greeted by temperatures topping 60 degrees this time around.

And when it was South Carolina's turn to vote later in January, the kind of wintry conditions New Hampshire voters are more used to prevailed.

But the weather is one of those variables that candidates know they simply can't control. Whatever happens in Ohio today, don't expect the loser—or for that matter, the winner—to complain about conditions on the ground.