Judge halts hearings on voter registration challenges

JOHN NOLAN

Associated Press  28 October 2004

CINCINNATI - A federal judge's decision to temporarily halt hearings on Republican challenges of thousands of voter registrations could prevent the hearings from ever taking place, the state GOP chairman said.

U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott ruled Wednesday that six county elections boards should stop the hearings scheduled for this week, siding with Democrats who alleged the GOP challenges were an attempt to keep legitimate votes from being counted in the presidential election.

Dlott's temporary order means that there is not enough time before next week's election for the counties to hold the challenge hearings, said Bob Bennett, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party.

Voters whose registrations are being challenged must be given three days notice of a hearing, and hearings must be held within two days of the election, Bennett said.

"The Democrats were very good using the judicial process to get the result they wanted," Bennett said.

The order left counties not named in the lawsuit trying to figure out what to do. In Summit County, the election board went ahead with hearings Thursday morning on most of its 976 challenges. A message was left for director Bryan Williams.

In Warren County in southwest Ohio, a hearing for 23 challenges remains scheduled for Friday morning. Director Susan Johnson said she was waiting for more information about Wednesday's court ruling before deciding what to do.

"I'd like to cancel it. We've got so much other work to do," she said.

The Democrats filed suit Tuesday requesting an order to halt the hearings that county boards of elections had scheduled to determine whether challenged voters live where they are registered and should remain on the rolls. Elections boards in at least 62 of 88 Ohio counties had scheduled hearings on the GOP challenges.

The Republicans challenged as many as 35,000 registrations after mail came back undelivered, saying they could be fraudulent. Democrats said the GOP was targeting new voters registered by political groups supporting Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic challenger to President Bush.

Two of the six counties - Cuyahoga, which includes Cleveland and Franklin, which includes Columbus - account for most of the remaining GOP challenges.

Dlott, appointed by former President Clinton in 1995, said her temporary order would remain in effect until further rulings in the case. She scheduled a hearing in her Cincinnati court for Friday morning.

The Ohio attorney general's office was reviewing the order and hadn't decided whether to appeal, spokeswoman Kim Norris said.

Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, named as a defendant, will not appeal, spokesman Carlo LoParo said. Blackwell believes his office should not have been a party to the lawsuit, LoParo said.

David Sullivan, voter protection coordinator for the Ohio Democratic Party, said that although Dlott's order applies only to the six counties that were defendants - Franklin, Lawrence, Medina, Cuyahoga, Scioto and Trumbull - all counties should suspend hearings on the challenges. He said the party would challenge in court any county that proceeded with hearings.

"This is an important victory for all Ohio voters because it means this cynical and desperate effort by the Republican Party to prevent thousands of voters to legally cast their votes has backfired," Sullivan said.

The party will have a strong presence at the polls on Election Day, should Republicans try another tactic to challenge voters, Sullivan said.

Mark Weaver, an attorney representing the Ohio Republican Party, said Dlott's order "removed important safeguards from Ohio law, and this could mean long lines and confusion on Election Day. This may force election officials to actually deal with many of these issues at the polls. It may take time to sort out who's eligible and who's not."

In a separate case, a federal judge in Cleveland ruled Wednesday that the federal government should not intervene in Cuyahoga County's attempt to correct clerical errors that invalidated an estimated 11,000 voter registration cards.

U.S. District Judge Paul R. Matia ruled that the elections board's procedures are reasonable in trying to correct errors, and provisional ballots served as a backstop. Voting rights groups had asked the judge to appoint a federal official to make sure voters were not turned away because of errors that could be corrected.