Bronco_Beerslug
11-01-2004, 06:29 AM
No one should be able to start grilling voters at the polls. Judge stops self-appointed republican voter-nazis and rightly so.
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CINCINNATI - A federal judge on Monday barred political party challengers from polling places throughout Ohio during Tuesday's election. State Republicans planned to appeal.
The order by U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott found that the application of Ohio's statute allowing challengers at polling places was unconstitutional. The presence of challengers inexperienced in the electoral process questioning voters about their eligibility would impede voting, she said.
Mark Weaver, lawyer for the Ohio Republican Party, called the ruling erroneous and said the party would ask the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (news - web sites) in Cincinnati to overturn it.
Dlott ruled on a lawsuit by a black Cincinnati couple who said Republican plans to deploy challengers to largely black precincts in Hamilton County was meant to intimidate and block black voters.
Republicans said they wanted to prevent voter fraud.
Dlott said in her order that the evidence "does not indicate that the presence of additional challengers would serve Ohio's interest in preventing voter fraud better than would the system of election judges."
In a separate case last week, Dlott had temporarily halted election board hearings on challenges. The state GOP had challenged 35,000 registrations because mail to those addresses came back undelivered. Democrats said the GOP was trying to keep poor and minorities, who move more often, from voting, and was targeting new voters registered by political groups supporting Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites).
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm..._pr/ohio_voting
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CINCINNATI - A federal judge on Monday barred political party challengers from polling places throughout Ohio during Tuesday's election. State Republicans planned to appeal.
The order by U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott found that the application of Ohio's statute allowing challengers at polling places was unconstitutional. The presence of challengers inexperienced in the electoral process questioning voters about their eligibility would impede voting, she said.
Mark Weaver, lawyer for the Ohio Republican Party, called the ruling erroneous and said the party would ask the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (news - web sites) in Cincinnati to overturn it.
Dlott ruled on a lawsuit by a black Cincinnati couple who said Republican plans to deploy challengers to largely black precincts in Hamilton County was meant to intimidate and block black voters.
Republicans said they wanted to prevent voter fraud.
Dlott said in her order that the evidence "does not indicate that the presence of additional challengers would serve Ohio's interest in preventing voter fraud better than would the system of election judges."
In a separate case last week, Dlott had temporarily halted election board hearings on challenges. The state GOP had challenged 35,000 registrations because mail to those addresses came back undelivered. Democrats said the GOP was trying to keep poor and minorities, who move more often, from voting, and was targeting new voters registered by political groups supporting Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites).
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm..._pr/ohio_voting