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Battles over absentee ballots, integrity of voting lists increasing in courts
By Tim Jones
Chicago Tribune
Published on Sunday, Oct 05, 2008
CHICAGO: In a furious, multistate campaign raging far from television cameras and cable TV chatter, scores of lawyers are arguing over the voting rights of perhaps millions of Americans who plan to cast ballots in the presidential election.
This is the courtroom campaign beneath the presidential campaign, fought in politically strategic states like Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, New York and others. The outcome of battles over voter registration, absentee ballots and the integrity of state voting lists could prove to be decisive in states where the margin of victory is expected to be slim.
''Voter registration is likely to be the issue of the 2008 election season,'' said Daniel Tokaji, an election law specialist at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law.
The legal battles come as millions of previously uninterested Americans, most of them Democrats energized by the primary contest between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, have registered to vote this year.
With Democrats emboldened by large gains in voter registration and Republicans relying on an effective get-out-the-vote machine, the election could turn on pre-election arguments over who is allowed to vote.
Some of the current clashes are partisan, but many of them involve politically unaffiliated groups that have long been active in voting rights debates — the American Civil Liberties Union, the League of Women Voters, and the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.
In Ohio, the battleground state that delivered a second term to President Bush in 2004, the state Republican Party asked a federal appeals court to stop same-day registration and voting. Last week, state and federal courts upheld same-day registration and voting.
Disputes over a federal law intended to create a statewide voter registration database are being heard in courtrooms in several states, including Wisconsin, New York and Alabama. A Wisconsin judge is expected to rule Oct. 23 on a lawsuit filed in August by Republican Attorney General J. B. Van Hollenseeking to force registration identity checks on 240,000 to as many as 1 million Wisconsin voters. The 2004 presidential election in Wisconsin was decided by only 11,400 votes, out of nearly 3 million votes cast.
Lawyers in Michigan are fighting over the constitutionality of purging the names of voters from lists and a plan to challenge the registrations of people whose names show up on mortgage foreclosure lists.
Challenges to the registration credentials of college students have popped up in other states. And in Florida, registration applications for thousands of Floridians have been held up by a dispute over the state's controversial law requiring stricter photo identification.
Richard Hasen, a professor specializing in election law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said the 2000 Florida presidential election debacle resulted in a series of new election laws and technology changes, aimed at protecting the integrity of the voting system. The unintended consequence was more lawsuits.
''With new laws there is uncertainty and that always provides a basis for litigation,'' Hasen said. ''This time around, I do think we're seeing a lot of litigation stemming from voter registration and that, in part, is driven by increased Democratic registrations and also by a change in who is interpreting the rule.''
Hasen's research has tracked a dramatic increase in election law litigation, with an average of 96 cases per year from 1996 through 1999, leaping to 254 per year between 2001 through 2004.
''Election law has become political strategy,'' Hasen said.
CHICAGO: In a furious, multistate campaign raging far from television cameras and cable TV chatter, scores of lawyers are arguing over the voting rights of perhaps millions of Americans who plan to cast ballots in the presidential election.
Get the full article here.
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