Ballot Watch: Despite Odds, Election Lawsuits Continue
Political operatives continue to push suits in the week before Election Day.
Oct. 27, 2008— -- The nearer the election, the longer the odds for lawsuits challenging the rights of voters to cast their ballots early -- or to cast them at all. But that hasn't stopped political operatives (mostly Republicans) from continuing to beat on courthouse doors for a decision that goes their way. Now they're dragging the feds into it, while keeping flagging suits on life support.
Here's the latest:
A fight Justice might rather avoid. The Justice Department has evoked memories of a recent scandal -- and possibly violated its own guidelines -- by slipping into Ohio's struggle over mismatches between voter information and registration rolls. At the behest of House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, the White House asked Justice Friday to see whether some 200,000 newly registered voters should go to the polls before fixing discrepancies between their registration cards and state databases. Ohio's Democratic secretary of state says the discrepancies are mostly typos and shouldn't stop people from voting. Republicans argue that the mismatches suggest fraud. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the GOP's challenge over the issue, but then came Boehner:
"Unless action is taken by the [Justice] Department immediately," the congressman wrote to President Bush, "There is a significant risk if not a certainty that unlawful votes will be cast and counted."
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino called the Justice Department's involvement "routine." But critics say stepping into highly partisan voting disputes is exactly what got Justice into trouble two years ago when it fired eight U.S. attorneys, largely for refusing to prosecute dubious voter-fraud cases. And as six lawyers formerly with the civil rights division said in a letter Friday, getting involved so near an election seems contrary to the department policy of delaying an investigation until after Election Day, thus avoiding interference with legitimate voting.
Indiana still not done with litigation. The Indiana Supreme Court refused Friday to get involved with the GOP's long-running lawsuit to shut down early voting in three of the state's overwhelmingly Democratic cities, leaving intact a lower-court ruling that the Lake County sites should stay open. The controversy seemed done, allowing the predominantly minority electorate in Hammond, East Chicago and Gary to continue voting early without traveling at least 45 minutes to the county seat. But on Friday, Republicans persuaded the state Court of Appeals to schedule a hearing in the case for Oct. 30. The upshot: Early voting may still be cut short -- by all of two days.
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