They are still counting votes in Ohio, a process that once seemed as if it might transfix the nation and require the attention of the Supreme Court, but now it’s something more like an asterisk. County elections boards around the state are putting the finishing touches on the democratic process. They must decide which of the more than 200,000 provisional ballots should be accepted and which rejected. The finale is rigorously bipartisan.
In Cuyahoga County, home to Cleveland, each of the approximately 30,000 provisional ballots may be examined only when pairs of Democratic and Republican eyeballs are available. Moving paper from one side of the room to the other requires a bipartisan escort. And the keys to the locked room where the ballots are stored are kept in a safe that can only be opened when an R provides half the code and a D provides the other.
If only each of the legislative and administrative steps along the way had been so collaborative. Instead, in an election year in which charges of voter suppression and voter fraud at times made as many headlines as the candidates, it was the courts that practiced the art of political compromise.
The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, which was a loud critic of the voting law changes advanced mostly by Republican-led legislatures around the country, said 25 new laws and two executive actions were adopted in 19 states. And where those laws were challenged in the courts, plaintiffs were routinely successful.
Full Article: Tidying up the 2012 election – The Washington Post.