A federal judge has overturned Ohio’s new restrictions on in-person early voting as unconstitutional on equal protection grounds, noting that the law didn’t even apply uniformly to military voters, much less to the general public, because the time available would vary by county. In the text below, UOCAVA stands for the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, as amended in 2009.
From the onset of this litigation, Defendants have pointed to special concerns for the military—concerns all parties share—and the military’s need to maintain additional access to in-person early voting. But for UOCAVA voters, what is left is, potentially, one day: Monday. Defendants have presented no evidence to sustain the inference that in-person early voting on Monday—one day—will burden county boards of elections to the extent that the injury to Plaintiffs is justified. Moreover, Defendants undercut the virtue of their support of military voters by failing to protect any significant measure of UOCAVA voting. Unless a serviceperson is “suddenly deployed” at exactly the right time—enabling in-person voting on Monday—he or she will likely be unable to vote, depending on the local elections board’s “discretion.” That the State cannot justify its interest in foreclosing Ohio voters for one day emphasizes the arbitrary nature of its action.
Finally, this Court notes that restoring in-person early voting to all Ohio voters through the Monday before Election Day does not deprive UOCAVA voters from early voting. Instead, and more importantly, it places all Ohio voters on equal standing. The only hindrance to UOCAVA early voting is the Secretary of State’s failure to set uniform hours at elections boards during the last three days before Election Day. On balance, the right of Ohio voters to vote in person during the last three days prior to Election Day—a right previously conferred to all voters by the State—outweighs the State’s interest in setting the 6 p.m. Friday deadline. The burden on Ohio voters’ right to participate in the national and statewide election is great, as evidenced by the statistical analysis offered by Plaintiffs and not disputed by Defendants. Moreover, the State fails to articulate a precise, compelling interest in establishing the 6 p.m. Friday deadline as applied to non-UOCAVA voters and has failed to evidence any commitment to the “exception” it rhetorically extended to UOCAVA voters. Therefore, the State’s interests are insufficiently weighty to justify the injury to Plaintiffs.
The issue here is not the right to absentee voting, which, as the Supreme Court has already clarified, is not a “fundamental right.” The issue presented is the State’s redefinition of in-person early voting and the resultant restriction of the right of Ohio voters to cast their votes in person through the Monday before Election Day. This Court stresses that where the State has authorized in-person early voting through the Monday before Election Day for all voters, “the State may not, by later arbitrary and disparate treatment, value one person’s vote over that of another.” Here, that is precisely what the State has done.
The ruling reinstates in-person early voting for all Ohio residents in the three days prior to the election. And guess what? Not a single military person will be affected at all by the ruling; in fact, by making the rules uniform statewide, the lawsuit, filed by the Obama campaign, actually increases the chance that military members will be able to vote. So much for that ridiculous lie told by the Romney campaign. You can read the full ruling here. The state intends to appeal the ruling to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.
9 comments
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Zinc Avenger (Sarcasm Tags 3.0 Compliant)
September 4, 2012 at 12:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It takes seconds to tell a lie, it takes weeks for the truth to come out, and the intended audience has an attention span of minutes.
gshelley
September 4, 2012 at 1:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I wonder if Romney and the others who have been claiming Obama was trying to take away early voting rights from the military are going to say anything. In an ideal world, there would be some journalist who’d challenge them on it.
eric
September 4, 2012 at 1:45 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
LOL. Romney has supposedly made abortion an off-limit topic for his interviewers, and that’s been a major electoral interest issue for decades. If his campaign can request that journalists not ask him about abortion policy and make that request stick, he should certainly not have a problem taking this, much less public issue, off the table.
You’re wishing they wouldn’t budge and inch, when they’ve already budged a mile.
d cwilson
September 4, 2012 at 1:59 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oh sure. They’ll say this a major defeat for Obama’s efforts to disenfranshise military personnel.
richardelguru
September 4, 2012 at 2:21 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Mutatis mutandis:
You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
The British journalist.
But, seeing what the man will do
Unbribed, there’s no occasion to.
Gvlgeologist, FCD
September 4, 2012 at 6:43 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
One would hope that the bright people in the Obama campaign, especially in Ohio and other states that are trying to limit voting, will point out that, “this is what the Repubs want to do to you. This is what we want…”
bryanfeir
September 4, 2012 at 6:57 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@richardelguru:
Without even looking up this classic piece of doggerel, I believe you’re missing a word on the second line, as it’s one iambic foot shorter than the other three lines. Should it not be ‘The stalwart British journalist’ instead?
John Hinkle
September 4, 2012 at 7:23 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
What?!? Un-fucking-believeable!! What the hell is this country coming too?
fastlane
September 5, 2012 at 6:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
And those who would enforce this (all (R)) are refusing to abide by the judge’s order. I assume they will all be slapped with a hefty fine, but apparently, they are willing to live with that (I suspect they will be paid back by one of the SuperPACs). I wonder is the SecState or elections commission might simply dismiss Ohio’s votes, then, or do something to de-legitimize this clearly traitorous action.