[EL] Ohio ruling

[Rick Hasen]

<http://electionlawblog.org/>


    Breaking News: 6th Circuit Stays Latest District Court Order on
    Provisional Ballots <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=42905>

Posted on October 31, 2012 3:10 pm <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=42905> 
by Rick Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

You can find the latest order in /SEIU v. Husted/ here 
<http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/12a0375p-06.pdf>. As I 
explained in this post <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=42527>,a federal 
district court, in the /SEIU/ case on remand from the Sixth Circuit, has 
expanded the number of provisional ballots which Ohio must count because 
of poll worker error to include ballots cast by voters in the wrong 
location (and not just the wrong precinct).

Today the 6th Circuit stayed this order, finding that the plaintiffs 
were unlikely to succeed on appeal, for two reasons. First, "While 
poll-worker error may contribute to the occurrence of 
wrong-place/wrong-precinct ballots, the burden on these /voters/ 
certainly differs from the burden on right-place/wrong-precinct 
voters---and likely decreases---because the wrong-place/wrong-precinct 
voter took affirmative steps to arrive at the wrong polling location. 
The district court abused its discretion by failing to distinguish these 
burdens." Second, the plaintiffs had originally sought this relief and 
did not get it in the district court and did not get clarification.  The 
equities counseled against a last minute election change when plaintiffs 
could have sought this relief sooner.

No word yet on whether plaintiffs will go to the en banc 6th Circuit or 
the Supreme Court.

Share <http://www.addtoany.com/share_save>
Posted in election administration <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>, 
provisional ballots <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=67>, The Voting 
Wars <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60> | Comments Off

-- 
Rick Hasen
Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
UC Irvine School of Law
401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000
Irvine, CA 92697-8000
949.824.3072 - office
949.824.0495 - fax
rhasen at law.uci.edu
http://law.uci.edu/faculty/page1_r_hasen.html
http://electionlawblog.org
Now available: The Voting Wars: http://amzn.to/y22ZTv

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20121031/edb19015/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: share_save_171_16.png
Type: image/png
Size: 1504 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20121031/edb19015/attachment.png>