Full Appeals Court Will Not Hear NEOCH Voting Case
Sets up a disparity between Provisional Ballots and Absentee Ballots in Ohio. Lets Stand the Disparity Among the Various Counties in How They Interpret the Law.
The court has ensured that thousands of registered Ohio voters—whose eligibility county elections boards do not question—will be disenfranchised over trivial errors and omissions on ballot forms, like missing a zip code, writing a name in legible cursive rather than in block letters, etc.
The court has also tolerated a situation in which large, urban counties with the biggest percentages of minority voters are disenfranchising voters over trivial ballot-form errors and omissions—when the small, white, rural counties have been exposed as not doing so. For example, if you inadvertently leave your zip code off of your form in Cuyahoga, Franklin, Hamilton, Stark, or Lucas counties, you will be disenfranchised even if the board has no doubt regarding your eligibility, while Meigs and other small counties will count that same vote. How is that remotely fair? The court swept these undisputed, inconvenient facts in the record under the rug and did not even discuss them. The appeals court’s decision defies Bush v. Gore and its own prior precedent, and neuters the Voting Rights Act as well, which prohibits the disparate racial impact these practices represent.
The homeless coalitions do not understand how a judge—whose House-speaker husband the case accuses of leading racial discrimination, and constitutional and voting-rights violations—can feel free to participate in a court decision denying voting rights, or how this is the impartial justice our system promises.
Ohioans need to be incredibly vigilant when filling out absentee and provisional-ballot forms, because Secretary Husted is playing a game of disenfranchisement 'gotcha', rather than showing a devotion to counting every legitimate vote.
While we are studying our Supreme Court options, hopes for affected Ohio voters in this close presidential election may well be lost. Voters may never learn that their ballots were not counted.
Statement from Subodh Chandra and Chandra Law Firm