A lawsuit challenging ballot rules in Ohio goes to trial on Monday — the latest in a series of voting rights cases brought in courts around the country. A group of labor and civil rights organizations are suing Ohio over a 2006 change to the state’s election code that requires all provisional ballots cast at the wrong voting precinct to be discarded. In Ohio, provisional ballots are used instead of traditional ballots when there are doubts about a voter’s eligibility because of missing registration or identification information. In most cases, a board of elections then reviews the ballots to determine if they should be counted. If the ballots are cast from the wrong precinct, they are discarded. In the 2008 election, 14,000 of Ohioan’s provisional ballots were discarded under the state’s election code.
Judge Algenon Marbley, of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, will decide whether the code violates any Constitutional protections or the Voting Rights Act, a Civil Rights-era law forbidding voting regulations with discriminatory effects. He is expected to hand down a decision before November’s presidential election. Under the code, ballots are discarded even when the poll worker, not the voter, is at fault. The ballots are voided most often at voting locations that serve multiple precincts, according to the lawsuit. At those locations, voters who get in the wrong line, by accident or at the direction of a poll worker, are given a provisional ballot for appearing at the wrong precinct.
Under the 2006 change to the code in Ohio, such a vote is not counted. This mistake, called “Right church, wrong pew” by civil rights groups, is most common at multi-precinct voting places, says the lawsuit. In addition, multi-precinct voting places are more common in cities, and thus more often harm black voters, the lawsuit says.
Full Article: Lawsuit challenges Ohio provisional ballot rules.
The Voting News
A News Service of the Verified Voting Foundation
