Presidential campaigns spar over Ohio election law

ANN SANNER

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — It doesn’t take much to start a polit­i­cal spat in Ohio, where jock­ey­ing for every pres­i­den­tial vote is prac­ti­cally blood sport. The lat­est pits Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s cam­paign against groups rep­re­sent­ing mil­i­tary vot­ers, an uncom­fort­able place for the com­man­der in chief.

At issue is the legal­ity of an Ohio law cut­ting three days from the early-voting period for every­one, except mem­bers of the armed forces and Ohioans liv­ing over­seas. The dis­pute reached fed­eral court Wednes­day, thanks to what the Obama cam­paign describes as its first law­suit any­where in the nation for the 2012 election.

U.S. Dis­trict Judge Peter Econo­mus in Colum­bus lis­tened to argu­ments from both sides but issued no deci­sion. He gave no time frame for a deci­sion, say­ing only that he would take the mat­ter under advisement.

Put sim­ply, both polit­i­cal par­ties see looser rules for early vot­ing as an advan­tage for Obama because they may encour­age minori­ties, young peo­ple and other harder-to-reach vot­ers to cast a bal­lot. Mil­i­tary votes are thought to lean Republican.

As state law­mak­ers debated changes to elec­tion laws, the Ohio Asso­ci­a­tion of Elec­tion Offi­cials endorsed the idea of cut­ting the three final early-voting days, those just before Elec­tion Day, con­tend­ing they needed the extra time over the week­end to pre­pare for Tues­day voting.

Democ­rats say it smacks of polit­i­cal manip­u­la­tion to restrict in-person vot­ing for most peo­ple while giv­ing ser­vice mem­bers extra time to vote, even if they are not sta­tioned abroad. They want the three days restored for everyone.

“Ohio has arbi­trar­ily decided to turn most, but not all, vot­ers away from open in-person vot­ing loca­tions for no rea­son at all,” attor­neys for the Obama cam­paign wrote in court filings.

In a sep­a­rate move Wednes­day, Ohio’s top elec­tion offi­cial ordered all 88 boards of elec­tion to be closed on week­ends, effec­tively elim­i­nat­ing two of the days in which mem­bers of the mil­i­tary could have cast an in-person bal­lot when other vot­ers couldn’t. His staff told reporters that no boards had opted to be open those days, and now they can’t under his directive.

Repub­li­cans had seen a chance with the law­suit to drive a wedge between Obama and parts of the coun­try where the mil­i­tary cul­ture runs deep. A Gallup poll in August found a 57–35 advan­tage for Repub­li­can Mitt Rom­ney over Obama among veterans.

Rom­ney was fast off the mark when the issue flared, declar­ing oppo­si­tion to the law­suit against the state’s attor­ney gen­eral and top elec­tions offi­cial, and sol­i­dar­ity with the 15 mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tions oppos­ing the legal chal­lenge. “I’ll work to pro­tect the vot­ing rights of our mil­i­tary, not under­mine them,” Rom­ney said in a statement.

Democ­rats point out that vet­er­ans, many elderly or infirm, are also among those dis­ad­van­taged by not hav­ing the extra days to vote in person.

AMVETS, a vet­er­ans’ advo­cacy group, and groups rep­re­sent­ing mem­bers of the National Guard, Army, Navy and Marines are among orga­ni­za­tions oppos­ing the suit. While keep­ing their dis­tance from the par­ti­san fray, they worry about the prece­dent that could be set for mil­i­tary vot­ers nation­wide if the fed­eral court here decides they should not be treated differently.

Early-voting rules have been in flux nation­ally, gen­er­ally with Demo­c­ra­tic lead­ers striv­ing for a more open reg­i­men and Repub­li­cans try­ing to hold the line or push back. In all, 32 states plus the Dis­trict of Colum­bia allow vot­ers to cast an early bal­lot by mail or in per­son with­out hav­ing to give a rea­son. In 2008, about 30 per­cent of Ohio’s total votes — or roughly 1.7 mil­lion — came in before Elec­tion Day.

Of those, Democ­rats esti­mated in the law­suit that 93,000 voted just in the final days. Back then, advance vot­ers had until the day before the elec­tion, a Mon­day. Now, early in-person vot­ing is to stop the Fri­day before Elec­tion Day for most.

It’s not sur­pris­ing to see an elec­tion law­suit pop­ping up in Ohio already.

“Ohio is a repeat player in the elec­tion lit­i­ga­tion busi­ness,” said Edward Foley, an elec­tions law expert at Ohio State Uni­ver­sity. “Ohio mat­ters and it stands to rea­son that the can­di­dates are going to care more about the vot­ing rules for a swing state.”

Obama won Ohio in 2008. Rom­ney is expected to make a strong play for it in November.

Three days of in-person vot­ing before Elec­tion Day were elim­i­nated for most Ohio vot­ers after a series of con­tentious elec­tion law changes cleared the state’s Republican-controlled Leg­is­la­ture and Repub­li­can Gov. John Kasich signed them into law.

The Obama cam­paign has a net­work of peo­ple han­dling voter pro­tec­tion issues in states in a more infor­mal way. For instance, the cam­paign has worked with state Demo­c­ra­tic par­ties in Florida and Col­orado to seek records in cases where the state claims to have a list to purge nonci­t­i­zens from the rolls. But the cam­paign hasn’t filed other law­suits in state or fed­eral courts.

“We don’t resort to law­suits as a mat­ter of pol­icy,” said Bob Bauer, gen­eral coun­sel of Obama for Amer­ica, the for­mal name for the president’s re-election effort. Law­suits are com­pli­cated, expen­sive, time-consuming and con­fus­ing, he added.

But Bauer said: “There isn’t any other way to solve the prob­lem in Ohio out­side this fed­eral court sys­tem. There’s noth­ing we can do because the deci­sion has been made, and that’s how the state is prepar­ing for the election.”

Before the roll­back, local boards of elec­tion had the dis­cre­tion to set their own early, in-person vot­ing hours on the three days before the elec­tion. Peo­ple were allowed up until Mon­day before the Tues­day elec­tion to vote in per­son. Week­end vot­ing var­ied among the state’s 88 counties.

Whether the abil­ity to vote dur­ing the final three days mat­ters to Ohio vot­ers remains unclear. Peo­ple have other ways to vote, includ­ing cast­ing an absen­tee by mail start­ing 35 days before the elec­tion and cast­ing an in-person bal­lot on other days.

Nor­man Carmichael, 64, of Colum­bus, said he’s taken advan­tage of the state’s in-person vot­ing rules before and he opposes any move that makes vot­ing harder for peo­ple. “I don’t think that’s fair,” he said, when asked about the restric­tions on the three days before the election.

Rema Ina, 29, of Colum­bus, typ­i­cally votes on Elec­tion Day and wasn’t aware Ohioans could even cast a bal­lot in per­son before then.

“I’m not both­ered by it because I didn’t even know about it,” she said.

Posted by AP News on Aug 15 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.