Obama Campaign Calls Ohio Early Vote Law Unconstitutional
By Andrew Harris and Mark Niquette - Jul 17, 2012 3:26 PM ET
Obama for America, the U.S. president’s re-election campaign committee, sued two Ohio officials over changes to state law that limit in-person early voting for some people and not others.
Under the law, families of armed forces members and civilians overseas can vote through the Monday before an election, while early voting for all other Ohioans ends on the preceding Friday, a disparity Barack Obama’s campaign claims is unconstitutional. The 2012 election will be held on a Tuesday.
“This lawsuit, at bottom, seeks to treat all Ohio citizens equally under the law,” Donald McTigue, general counsel for the Obama campaign in Ohio, said today on a conference call with reporters after the complaint was filed in federal court in Columbus, the state capital.
Ohio, which has 18 electoral votes, has been a bellwether in U.S. politics and no Republican has been elected president without a victory there. Obama, a Democrat, won the state in 2008 with 51.5 percent of the vote.
The Obama campaign is seeking a court order invalidating the deadline statutes. Named as defendants in its complaint are Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and Secretary of State Jon Husted, both Republicans.
DeWine’s office is reviewing the lawsuit, the attorney general’s spokesman, Dan Tierney, said by phone.
Helped Democrats
Expanded early voting is perceived to have helped Democrats, especially Obama in 2008, more than Republicans, Daniel P. Tokaji, a professor at Ohio State University Moritz College of Law and associate director of the law school’s election law center, said in a phone interview last year.
The state’s early-voting laws were enacted after the presidential election in 2004, when long lines and broken equipment forced voters to wait as long as seven hours to cast their ballots, according to an Obama campaign press statement released today.
With Monday-deadline early voting in place for the 2008 presidential election, about 30 percent of voters took advantage of it, according to the campaign.
The case is Obama for America v. Husted, 12-cv-636, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Ohio (Columbus).
To contact the reporters on this story: Andrew Harris in Chicago at aharris16@bloomberg.net; Mark Niquette in Columbus at mniquette@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net
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