Ohio Loses Appeal, Can’t Reject Voters in Wrong Precincts
/Ohio was barred from disqualifying provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct, an appeals court said, upholding an earlier ruling.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati issued the ruling yesterday, the second loss in two weeks for the state in election-related lawsuits.
A lower-court federal judge in August ruled that provisional ballots, used to record votes when eligibility is an issue, can’t be thrown out if they’re filed in the wrong precinct as a result of poll-worker error. Opponents of a 2006 law saying they must be discarded argued that the law would unfairly cause the rejection of thousands of votes in the November election.
The lawsuit is one of at least 15 pending nationwide over election law limits on issues such as early voting, registration and identification in the run-up to the Nov. 6 vote. Yesterday, South Carolina became the fourth state to be blocked from requiring voters to show photo identification before casting a ballot.
A special panel of three federal judges in Washington ruled that given the time left before the election, requiring photo ID at polling stations puts a burden on minority voters that violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965. “Proper and smooth functioning” of a key protection in the South Carolina law can only be assured in elections after this year, the judges said.
Too Much Risk
“Even assuming the best intentions and extraordinary efforts by all involved, achieving that goal is too much to reasonably demand or expect in a four week-period -- and there is too much of a risk to African-American voters for us to roll the dice in such a fashion,” U.S. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh said in the ruling.
The court said there was nothing inherently discriminatory in the law that would bar enforcement in future elections.
South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson called the ruling “a major victory for South Carolina and its election process.”
“It affirms our voter ID law is valid and constitutional under the Voting Rights Act,” he said in an e-mailed statement. “The fact remains, voter ID laws do not discriminate or disenfranchise. They ensure integrity at the ballot box.”
On Oct. 5, Ohio was barred by a different panel of the appeals court in Cincinnati from enforcement a law that ended early-voting days for the general populace on Nov. 2, while allowing members of the military and those residents living abroad to cast ballots until Nov. 5. The state appealed that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Early voting in the state of 11.5 million people began on Oct. 2, according to Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s website.
Vermont Sued
Vermont and its chief election official were sued yesterday by the U.S. over the state’s alleged failure to send more than 20 percent of the absentee ballots requested by Vermont’s military and overseas voters. The complaint filed by the U.S. Justice Department in federal court in Vermont seeks an order to ensure military voters can cast their ballots in time to have their votes counted, the department said in an e-mailed statement.
The lawsuit was filed under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, which requires states to allow uniformed service voters and their families as well as overseas citizens to register to vote and to vote absentee for all elections for federal office, according to the statement.
Vermont Secretary of State James C. Condos, who is named as a defendant, didn’t return a phone call seeking comment on the lawsuit yesterday after regular business hours.
Texas Lawsuit
Also yesterday, Harris County in Texas was sued in federal court in Houston by the League of United Latin American Citizens over claims it discriminates against blacks and Latinos by disproportionately challenging their voter registration.
The county, which includes Houston, rejects voter- registration applications from zip codes dominated by Latino and black residents at a higher rate than it does applications from zip codes with predominantly white residents, the activists said in the complaint.
Don Sumners, the county’s voting registrar, said in an e- mailed statement that LULAC’s challenge “another unwarranted political lawsuit” similar to one filed in 2008 by the Texas Democratic Party. That case was resolved “when the Democratic Party was unable to produce a single person who had been illegally denied the right to register and vote,” he said.
Sumners, a Republican, said he’s already refused to remove any voters from election rolls as part of the state’s dead-voter purge program, a campaign he urged state officials to alter to keep from improperly deleting voters close to a presidential election.
