This week in the War on Voting: Husted wins one in Ohio, Florida 'fixing' ballots before the count

Judge refuses to reinstate Ohio election board members

U.S. District Judge Walter Rice ruled Thursday that Ohio Secretary of State John Husted had not acted unconstitutionally or unjustly when he fired two Democratic election board members in Montgomery County in August. Rice therefore refused to grant a temporary injunction to restore the men to their positions.

For the past seven years, election boards in Ohio's 88 counties have individually chosen how many early voting hours they would be open ahead of elections. But this year Democrats noticed a new pattern in the decisions of the boards, each of which comprises four members, two Republicans and two Democrats. In Republican-dominated areas of the state, the boards were approving extensive early-voting hours with unanimous votes. In some highly urban counties with heavy Democratic majorities, however, the Republican board members were voting against extended early voting. Husted was breaking these ties each time by approving fewer hours.

Under pressure of a public outcry that this approach was unfairly partisan, Husted ultimately limited early-voting hours in all the state's counties. Only a few hours were provided for after-work time slots. But Husted's directive made no mention of weekend voting hours. When Montgomery County Democratic board members Dennis Lieberman and Tom Ritchie voted to hold weekend voting hours, Husted not only overrode their decision by breaking the board's tie, he also told the two men to rescind their votes. When they refused, he fired them.

In a lawsuit, the two sought a temporary injunction that would have immediately given them their board seats back. But Judge Rice ruled that they had 'failed to make a clear showing why they are entitled to the requested relief.' He set a Nov. 13 hearing to cover other matters in the case.

• Ballot screw-up requires another Florida recount: A design flaw is forcing Palm Beach County, Florida, to manually duplicate the votes on 27,000 absentee ballots so they can be digitally scanned. The problem has dredged up bad memories of the 2000 election in which "butterfly ballots" in Palm Beach County and ballot problems in Duval County forced a disputed recount in the presidential race that landed in the U.S. Supreme Court and led to the transparently partisan decision in Bush v. Gore. Repercussions this year will be far less.

  When it was discovered there was a missing header on the original ballots, Democratic Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher ordered it inserted. Consequently, about half the ballots could not then be read by scanner. The solution to the problem, approved by the Republican secretary of state, is for employees to manually duplicate onto new ballots the votes cast on each of the flawed ballots so they can be read by scanner. The process will be carried out by 10 teams, each comprising a Democratic and Republican. Each ballot will take about two minutes to complete, a total of 900 hours.
  

  "They do get kudos for transparency," said Michael D. Martinez, a professor of political science at the University of Florida who has studied electoral behavior. "There's always the potential for error, with any process that you come up with, but this one sounds really fair."

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