|
Court permits GOP poll challenges in ohio Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=acjfOoelzulE&refer=top_world_newshttp://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=acjfOoelzulE&refer=top_world_news
U.S. Court Permits GOP Poll Challengers in Ohio (Update13)
Nov. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Republican challengers may be present at polling places in Ohio to contest the eligibility of voters in today's presidential election, a U.S. appeals court ruled.
A three-judge panel this morning overturned two lower court rulings which held that such challenges unduly burdened citizens' right to vote. U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens rejected a request to delay enforcement of the decision by the Cincinnati-based U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The appeals court ruling allows thousands of Republicans to challenge the eligibility of newly registered Democrats in Ohio, which has 20 electoral votes and is considered a key state in the race between President George W. Bush, the Republican incumbent, and Senator John Kerry, his Democratic challenger. The appeals panel said it had to balance citizens' rights to vote freely with Ohio's ability to root out fraudulent voters.
``There is a strong public interest in allowing every registered voter to vote freely,'' wrote U.S. Circuit Judge John Rogers, who was appointed by President Bush, in a 2-1 decision. ``There is also a strong public interest in permitting legitimate statutory processes to operate to preclude voting by those who are not entitled to vote.''
Challengers at polling places could delay voting in some precincts and lead to lawsuits after the election, said Terri Enns, a professor at Ohio State University's law school. Democrats said Republican challengers who question the ability of voters to cast ballots would create long lines and deter voters. Lines may get longer because of the ruling, Enns said.
No Record
``If the litigation had been accompanied by a somewhat more fully developed record or if the relief granted by the lower courts had been a bit more narrowly tailored, there's a very high probability that the suit might have succeeded,'' said Laurence Tribe, a Harvard University constitutional law professor who is advising Kerry.
The appeals court judges realized that the stated Republican effort to make sure that no one was voting improperly was ``a mask for an agenda of suppressing perfectly legal and legitimate votes,'' he said.
``There's no question that the conduct of poll watchers can violate federal law, but the simple fact that there would be poll watchers is not a clear violation,'' said Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School. ``Federal courts struggle to minimize the intrusion of federal law into an area that has been a state area.''
Challengers
The Ohio Republican Party has 3,600 challengers available to monitor precinct places in the state, said Kevin Sheridan, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee. Dan Trevas, a spokesman for the Ohio Democratic Party, didn't return calls seeking comment on the ruling.
There will be 1,500 challengers made available by Election Protection, organized by People for the American Way Foundation, a civil liberties advocacy group, said Leslye Huff, a coordinator for the project.
There are 11,360 voting precincts in Ohio, according to James Lee, a spokesman for the Ohio secretary of state's office. One duly designated challenger from each party is permitted per precinct, he said. Some precincts share polling places, he said, adding that most do not.
Under Ohio law, poll workers may question voters on four grounds: whether they are 18 or over; whether they are citizens; whether they lived in the state for at least 30 days; and whether they are voting in the precinct where they are registered. Enns said that uncertainty remains over what documents are required to prove residency or age.
GOP Goals
Republicans have said they want to reduce fraud by looking for voters whose names are on lists of deceased people or those who already cast absentee ballots.
Another source of possible legal skirmishes, Enns said, could be the provisional ballots cast by voters whose eligibility is questioned at the polls. Under Ohio and U.S. law, those voters will cast ballots that will be counted 10 days later after election officials verify their eligibility, she said.
``It's possible that provisional ballots, absentee ballots and challenges could cause litigation after the fact,'' she said.
Ohio Democratic Voter Protection Coordinator David Sullivan said in a statement that the appeals court ruling was ``unfortunate.'' He said Democrats ``were prepared for this outcome and will have voting rights volunteers at the polls to defend the rights of voters.''
Fight Is `Over'
Alphonse Gerhardstein, a lawyer in Cincinnati who represented voters in one of the two Ohio cases said the legal fight to keep challengers out of polling places was ``over.'' Still, he said that no Republican challenger showed up at his mostly black precinct this morning after the ruling.
``We're obviously very pleased that the century-old tradition of having challengers at polls was upheld by the sixth circuit and Justice Stevens,'' said Michael Carvin, a partner at Jones Day law firm in Washington, who has been retained by the Bush campaign to advise on election matters.
In a concurring opinion, Circuit Judge James L. Ryan said that in neither of the cases before the panel have the plaintiffs shown that ``the intimidation, chaos, confusion, `pandemonium,' and inordinate delay they allege will occur tomorrow is `actual or imminent.'''
Ineligible
Ryan reasoned that, without proof of such confusion, the plaintiffs, two Cincinnati voters, weren't eligible to bring a lawsuit. Ryan was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, a Republican.
Circuit Judge R. Guy Cole disagreed, asserting in a dissent that, ``Permitting hundreds of election challengers to challenge voters at particular polls will promote chaos and uncertainty; it will divert the attention of election judges; and most importantly, it will create a level of voter frustration that could deter citizens from exercising their constitutional right to vote.''
Cole also wrote that the challengers, ``for the first time since the civil rights era, seek to target precincts that have a majority African-American population, and without any legal standards or restrictions, challenge the voter qualifications of people as they stand waiting to exercise their fundamental right to vote.''
Cole was appointed by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat.
The 6th Circuit decision overturned rulings by federal judges in Cincinnati and Akron, Ohio.
A Day of Battles
The appeals court ruling early this morning followed a day of legal battles yesterday in three federal courtrooms over the ability of Republicans to challenge Democratic voters in Ohio polling places. Ohio, along with Pennsylvania, Florida and a handful of other states, have been a focus of the Bush and Kerry campaigns for weeks.
U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott in Cincinnati and U.S. District Judge John Adams in Akron ruled yesterday that Republican workers threatened to create chaos today and intimidate voters at the polls.
In a separate ruling in Newark, New Jersey, U.S. District Judge Dickinson Debevoise barred the Ohio Republican Party from using a list of 23,000 newly registered voters to challenge their ability to cast ballots.
Debevoise ruled that Republicans violated decrees he issued in the 1980s that barred political parties from using race or ethnicity as a factor in challenging the integrity of voter registrations.
A federal appeals court in Philadelphia upheld Debevoise's ruling.
South Dakota Ruling
A federal judge in South Dakota granted Democratic U.S. Senator Tom Daschle a partial victory today when he barred Republican poll watchers from following American Indians out of voting places in one county.
Lawrence L. Piersol, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of South Dakota in Sioux Falls, ordered the poll watchers to stop following the voters and copying their license plates.
``Whether the intimidation was intended or simply the result of excessive zeal is not the issue, as the result was the intimidation of prospective Native American voters in Charles Mix County,'' Piersol wrote in his two-page order, issued today.
The case is Summit County Democratic Central and Executive Committee v. Blackwell, No. 04-4311, and Spencer v. Blackwell, No. 04-4312, 6th Circuit.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Andrew Dunn in New York at adunn8@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Patrick Oster at poster@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: November 2, 2004 13:57 EST
|
|
