Clinton and the Ohio Early Voting Lawsuit

Lawyers for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Ohio Democratic Party have filed suit over Ohio’s early voting laws, suggesting that Clinton is already looking downfield to what will be a key battleground state in the 2016 general election.

The lawsuit, filed late Friday in Columbus, alleges that Republican lawmakers in Ohio have specifically targeted key Democratic constituencies, young people, Latinos and African-Americans, by eliminating the so-called “Golden Week” during which voters could register and vote on the same day.

The lawsuit does not mention Clinton, and she is not a plaintiff.  The plaintiffs include the Ohio Organizing Collaborative and three Ohio voters, an Ohio State University student with a California driver’s license, a Democratic poll worker from suburban Cincinnati, and an African-American minister from Akron.

The lawyers are more interesting.  They include Don McTigue, a lawyer for the Ohio Democratic Party, and Marc Elias, who’s the general counsel for Hillary for America.  Elias is not licensed to practice law in Ohio and is seeking permission from the court to represent the plaintiffs in the case.

The Clinton campaign said it was aware of the lawsuit, but it wasn’t filed on behalf of the campaign.  “However, the campaign shares the concern about undue burdens being placed on the right to vote in states across the country, including Ohio,” said Hillary for America Press Secretary Brian Fallon.

But Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, a defendant in the suit, called the plaintiff’s lawyers “politically motivated, legal lap dogs” who were “simply intending to interject chaos into Ohio’s nationally recognized voting system.”  Husted notes that Ohio recently settled a federal lawsuit over many of the same issues, and that Ohio still has more liberal early voting laws than New York, where Clinton lives.

Elias said the lawsuit was brought on behalf of the named plaintiffs, and is just one of many lawsuits his Washington law firm, Perkins Coie, has brought to defend the right to vote.  “It is unfortunate that Secretary Husted chose to respond with a political attack rather than working to remedy the problems identified in our suit,” he said.











NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker Technorati Tag in Del.icio.us

Federal Judge Orders Ohio to Undo Cuts to Early Voting

A federal judge, Peter C. Economus, on Thursday blocked Ohio’s cuts to early voting and ordered the state to establish additional polling days before November’s elections, saying the reductions would disproportionately harm the poor and members of minority groups.

Judge Economus’s ruling directed Ohio to restore early voting during evenings and on at least two Sundays, and to reinstate Golden Week, the first week of early voting in which many African-American churches organize congregants to register and vote on the same day.  Gov. Kasich and his supporters have said the measures were needed to reduce fraud, save money and create uniformity of practice across the state, and that the four-week early voting period allowed sufficient time for people to cast ballots.

A spokesman for the state attorney general, Mike DeWine, said the state would review the ruling before deciding whether to appeal.

The United States Justice Department filed a statement of interest in the case and has challenged similar measures elsewhere, including in North Carolina.

The ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the Ohio Conference of the N.A.A.C.P., several African-American churches and the League of Women Voters of Ohio.

“This ruling means that thousands of voters who have needed these particular early voting opportunities will continue to have that right,” said Dale Ho, director of the A.C.L.U.’s Voting Rights Project.

Judge Economus wrote that the state’s measures violated both the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and the Voting Rights Act by creating unlawful barriers to the polls for minorities and the poor.  The state’s arguments about reducing fraud, according to the judge, “did not withstand logical scrutiny.”

The ruling cited a study of early voting in Cuyahoga County, the greater Cleveland area, in 2008 that found that African-American voters were more than 26 times more likely to have cast ballots during the early voting period than white voters.

“Despite accounting for a mere 28.6 percent of the estimated overall vote, African-American voters cast an estimated 77.9 percent of all” early votes in the county that year, the ruling said.  A second study cited by Judge Economus found that early voters who were white, African-American or Latino had lower incomes than those who cast ballots on Election Day or by mail.

The ruling said that restricting Sunday voting would have a similar effect because many of those early voters were African-Americans who voted after attending church services as part of a “Souls to the Polls” initiative.

Voting by mail, the judge wrote, would not relieve the reduced access to voting sites because “the record is undisputed that African-Americans, lower-income individuals, and the homeless are distrustful of the mail and/or voting by mail.”










NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
Technorati Tag in Del.icio.us

OH's New Voter Restrictions

Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed into law two election-related bills.

One bill trims early voting by several days.  The other sets restrictions for mailing unsolicited absentee ballot applications.

SB 238 shortens the early, in-person voting period by eliminating the week-long window where voters may simultaneously register to vote and cast an early in-person ballot, otherwise known as the “Golden Week”.

Under SB 205:

- Permits the Secretary of State to mail unsolicited applications for absent voter's ballots only for a general election and only if the General Assembly has made an appropriation for that particular mailing.

- Prohibits any other public official or employee who is acting in an official capacity, and any public office, from mailing any unsolicited applications for absent voter's ballots.

- Permits the Secretary of State to send unsolicited applications for absent voter's ballots for elections in 2014, regardless of whether the General Assembly has made an appropriation for that purpose.

- Prohibits a board of elections from prepaying the return postage for any application for absent voter's ballots and for any absent voter's ballots that it delivers to an elector.

- Generally prohibits an election official from filling out any portion of an absent voter's ballot application, or from filling out any portion of an absent voter's ballot or absent voter's ballot identification envelope, on behalf of a voter.

- Allows the Secretary of State or a board of elections to preprint an applicant's name and address on an application for absent voter's ballots before mailing that application to the applicant.

Democrats believe the measure violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection and the Voting Rights Act and will sue in Federal Court.










NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
Technorati Tag in Del.icio.us