Early voting reinstated but not required in Ohio

ANN SANNER

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — A fed­eral appeals court on Fri­day rein­stated in-person early vot­ing in the bat­tle­ground of Ohio on the final three days before the Nov. 6 elec­tion, hand­ing a vic­tory to Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s campaign.

But local boards of elec­tions would have the dis­cre­tion to decide whether to allow vot­ers to cast an early bal­lot on the week­end and Mon­day before Elec­tion Day — just as they could in 2008.

The rul­ing by the three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincin­nati came in a case tar­get­ing a state law that ends early vot­ing for most res­i­dents on the Fri­day evening before a Tues­day elec­tion. The law makes an excep­tion for mil­i­tary per­son­nel and Ohio vot­ers liv­ing overseas.

Obama’s cam­paign and Democ­rats sued Ohio’s Sec­re­tary of State Jon Husted and Attor­ney Gen­eral Mike DeWine, both Repub­li­cans, over the legal­ity of the law. They argued that every­one should have a chance to vote on those days.

Husted said Fri­day evening that his office was still review­ing the 6th Circuit’s decision.

“On Mon­day, we will make a deter­mi­na­tion on how to pro­ceed legally and pro­vide admin­is­tra­tive guid­ance to Ohio’s boards of elec­tions,” his office said in a statement.

Ohio is among 34 states, plus the Dis­trict of Colum­bia, where peo­ple can vote early with­out giv­ing any rea­son. About 30 per­cent of the swing state’s total vote — or roughly 1.7 mil­lion bal­lots — came in ahead of Elec­tion Day in 2008. Cru­cial to Obama’s win that year was early vot­ing in Ohio, North Car­olina and Florida.

Obama won Ohio in the last pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, but Repub­li­can rival Mitt Rom­ney is mak­ing a strong play for it. No GOP can­di­date has won the White House with­out Ohio in his column.

Obama’s cam­paign praised the Ohio rul­ing in a state­ment Friday.

“As a result of this deci­sion, every voter, includ­ing mil­i­tary, vet­er­ans, and over­seas vot­ers along­side all Ohioans, will have the same oppor­tu­nity to vote early through the week­end and Mon­day before the elec­tion,” said Bob Bauer, gen­eral coun­sel for Obama for America.

In the same week as the Ohio deci­sion, a judge ruled Tues­day that Penn­syl­va­nia vot­ers won’t have to show photo iden­ti­fi­ca­tion to cast bal­lots on Elec­tion Day, a move that could help Obama.

The Democ­rats who sued in Ohio said a series of leg­isla­tive changes by state law­mak­ers had arbi­trar­ily elim­i­nated the oppor­tu­nity for most Ohio res­i­dents to vote in per­son on the three final days before the elec­tion, while giv­ing mil­i­tary or over­seas vot­ers the chance to do so. They esti­mated in their law­suit that 93,000 peo­ple voted dur­ing the final three-day win­dow before the 2008 election.

Attor­neys for the state have said many laws already grant mil­i­tary per­son­nel spe­cial vot­ing accom­mo­da­tions, such as require­ments for states to send them absen­tee bal­lots 45 days before the elec­tion. And they con­tend local boards also need those three days to pre­pare for the election.

U.S. Dis­trict Judge Peter Econo­mus in Colum­bus had ruled that vot­ers’ right to cast bal­lots in per­son on those three final days out­weighs the state’s rea­sons for lim­it­ing that oppor­tu­nity. The judge issued a pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion on Aug. 31, con­clud­ing that the state’s law was uncon­sti­tu­tional in chang­ing the in-person early vot­ing dead­line and that the state was wrongly valu­ing cer­tain votes above others.

The appeals court affirmed the lower court’s rul­ing on Friday.

“While we read­ily acknowl­edge the need to pro­vide mil­i­tary vot­ers more time to vote, we see no cor­re­spond­ing jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for giv­ing oth­ers less time,” Judge Eric L. Clay wrote in the opinion.

Econo­mus had said in his rul­ing that he expected Husted to direct all county elec­tions boards to main­tain a spe­cific, con­sis­tent sched­ule on those final three days.

But the appeals court said it didn’t inter­pret the judge’s order as man­dat­ing early vot­ing hours dur­ing the final days.

While the state can’t pre­vent non­mil­i­tary vot­ers from par­tic­i­pat­ing in early vot­ing, Clay wrote, “the State is not affir­ma­tively required to order the boards to be open for early voting.”

Clay said local boards of elec­tions would have the dis­cre­tion to allow all Ohio vot­ers to vote dur­ing Sat­ur­day, Nov. 3; Sun­day, Nov. 4; and Mon­day, Nov. 5.

At least two elec­tions boards have already set their own hours on dis­puted days.

Jef­fer­son County in east­ern Ohio and Wayne County in the north­east have voted to estab­lish their own times ahead of the rul­ing from the appeals court. And elec­tions board mem­bers in Sum­mit County, where Akron is the county seat, also voted on early vot­ing hours dur­ing the final days. But it was unclear if that vote counted because of ques­tions over whether they had a quorum.

Posted by AP News on Oct 5 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.