Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted finds himself going to court yet again for his constant and blatantly partisan attempts to make voting more difficult in that state. Two members of a county board of elections that Husted fired for trying to make it easier to vote in their county are now suing him for wrongful termination.
Montgomery County Elections Board members Dennis Lieberman and Tom Ritchie Sr. filed a federal lawsuit this morning against Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted for unjustly firing them after they voted to continue allowing residents to vote early on weekends in their home county.
Lieberman and Ritchie, who combined have nearly 28 years experience on the board, are also asking for a temporary restraining order that would immediately reinstate them on the Montgomery County Elections Board.
“We believe SOS Husted was wrong when he unjustly fired us. He violated our free speech and the free speech of other county elections board members,” Lieberman said. “SOS Husted fired us and then dared other election board members to try and stand up for the voters in their community.”
The judge in another case recently overturned a state law that restricted early voting in the three days before an election, ordering Husted to keep all polling places open during that time. Husted initially refused to follow the order because the state was appealing, but he backed down and complied with the order after the judge demanded that he show up personally in his courtroom to explain his actions.
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Mr Ed
September 13, 2012 at 12:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The details of the case aside I find it disturbing that an AG could fire a board member simply because of how they voted. People are elected or appointed to boards to perform a duty and if one individual can fire or intimidate the board so that it must follow his idea then the board is a sham.
Reminds me of the Saturday Night Massacre.
ahcuah
September 13, 2012 at 12:54 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
As far as I can tell, these guys will lose. According to Ohio Law:
3501.05(C). The secretary of state shall do all of the following: (C) Prepare rules and instructions for the conduct of elections;
3501.11(E). Each board of elections shall exercise by a majority vote all powers granted to the board by Title XXXV of the Revised Code, shall perform all the duties imposed by law, and shall do all of the following: (E) Make and issue rules and instructions, not inconsistent with law or the rules, directives, or advisories issued by the secretary of state, as it considers necessary for the guidance of election officers and voters;
Furthermore, the Secretary of State has the power to fire them.
3501.16: The secretary of state may summarily remove or suspend any member of a board of elections, or the director, deputy director, or any other employee of the board, for neglect of duty, malfeasance, misfeasance, or nonfeasance in office, for any willful violation of Title XXXV of the Revised Code.
Also, since the fired people were Democrats, Husted is required to appoint 2 new Democrats (and did).
Gregory in Seattle
September 13, 2012 at 1:06 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Speaking of Ohio, what is the current status of their Diebold electronic voting devices? There was a huge fuss about them in 2000 and 2004: machines that offered no paper trail and no auditing capacity kept solely in the custody of a company whose CEO had vowed to deliver the state to Bush II.
Are they still in use? I suspect not, otherwise there would be no need to go to the effort of suppressing voter turnout when you can simply edit the count to get whatever results you want.
uncephalized
September 13, 2012 at 1:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@ahcuah #2:
“3501.16: The secretary of state may summarily remove or suspend any member of a board of elections, or the director, deputy director, or any other employee of the board, for neglect of duty, malfeasance, misfeasance, or nonfeasance in office, for any willful violation of Title XXXV of the Revised Code.”
Did you read what you posted? The rules say board members can be removed for doing things that are illegal, neglectful, unethical, etc., not because they voted in a way the Secretary doesn’t like on a political issue. That code seems pretty clear.
Brain Hertz
September 13, 2012 at 2:14 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@ahcuah,
I was just about to copy and paste the sentence about grounds for termination, but uncephalized beat me to it. In what way are any of those conditions met?
I’d be interested to see if there’s any case law here, but the statute seems pretty narrow to me.
ahcuah
September 13, 2012 at 2:37 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The SoS makes rules. He made a rule about early voting hours, directing election boards in Ohio’s 88 counties to have the same early in-person voting hours on weekdays and have no hours on weekends. The members of the board only have the authority to make rules consistent with that rule, not flouting it. By flouting the SoS’s rule, they were negligent in their duties. It’s also probably one of the -feasances.
d cwilson
September 13, 2012 at 2:38 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
So, if you can be fired for not voting the way the secretary likes, what’s the point in letting them hold a vote in the first place?
Also, each board has four members (two democrats, two republicans), which means you need three votes to pass anything, but only two were fired? I guess the republican(s) who broke from the herd were forgiven.
The other argument in their favor is that Husted’s initial instructions were vague and gave the members of the board enough wiggle room to think that early voting could be permissable.
ahcuah
September 13, 2012 at 3:00 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Basically, they can make subsidiary rules (from what I understand). When he says, “here are the voting hours”, it is their responsibility to make subsidiary rules that implement that higher rule.
Tie votes on a Board of Elections are broken by the Secretary of State (in other words, right now, the Republicans always win). From what I seem to recall, these two guys lost the vote on extended hours–Husted was pissed enough, though, to fire them anyways, just for not obeying him.
And in case you didn’t see what led to this, originally, with each Board setting its own hours and Husted breaking tie votes, Republican areas were getting extended voting hours while Democratic areas were getting restricted ones. That was just too blatant, so Husted instead went for uniform hours everywhere, but uniform hours guaranteed to lessen the Democratic vote.
Brain Hertz
September 13, 2012 at 6:13 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
That’s not at all obvious… things like negligence and malfeasance are usually treated as a very high bar to meet.
The other circumstances certainly make it look like they were fired for voting in a way the secretary of state didn’t like, which is kind of problematic in terms of showing something like “neglect of duty”. There seems to me to be a pretty strong argument that if the legally established procedure requires a vote to be held, those voting necessarily can’t be required to vote a particular way in order to not be guilty of any of “neglect of duty, malfeasance, misfeasance, or nonfeasance in office”.
ahcuah
September 13, 2012 at 8:37 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Brian, your voting point is a pretty good point. I guess we’ll now have to see what the courts say.
democommie
September 14, 2012 at 7:05 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Brian, your voting point is a pretty good point. I guess we’ll now have to see what the courts say.”
A.) It’s Kansas.
B.) Whatever the decision might be, it will prolly be made AFTEr the November elecctions.
The GOPricks have been using the strategy of violating the law and letting the courts sort it all out, after the damage has been done, for years.
baal
September 14, 2012 at 10:33 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“he show up personally in his courtroom” Contempt of court is an unappreciated power. Once the SOS steps into that judges courtroom (on a matter before the court), the judge has the power to order him confined in a holding cell until the SOS gets on board with the judges order. This is the same power judges use to compel journalist-witnesses like Judith Miller (what a story she is) to talk (and conversely why several States have passed so called journalist shield laws).
Husted’s public remarks about not complying with the judgment did have some jeopardy for him (and rightly so).
PatrickG
September 14, 2012 at 3:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Er, no, it’s Ohio. :)