Judge blocks voter eligibility hearings : Cleveland IMC (((i)))

Judge blocks voter eligibility hearings
Thursday, October 28, 2004
Bill Sloat
Plain Dealer Reporter
Cincinnati - A federal judge ruled for Democrats Wednesday and stopped election officials from conducting hearings in Cuyahoga and Medina counties to question thousands of voters whose eligibility to cast ballots has been challenged by the Ohio Republican Party.
Officials said most of the disputed voter registrations - 17,000 to 18,000 - are in Cuyahoga County, where an unprecedented series of hearings were scheduled to start today at the Cleveland Convention Center.
Michael Vu, director of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, said lawyers had advised the board to postpone sending out letters on the hearings because of the impending court decision.
"We waited and are going to follow whatever the court's decision is on this," Vu said. Wednesday's ruling "does resolve a portion of this, even though we know there is going to be an appeal by the Republican Party."
The temporary restraining order stopping the hearings issued in Cincinnati by U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott also applies to Franklin, Trumbull, Scioto and Lawrence counties, where similar pre-emptive challenges involving about 5,100 voters were pending.
About 245 voters were challenged in Medina County, court filings show.
Medina County residents Amy Miller and Mindi Haddix were the lead plaintiffs in the class action.
Miller, who lives in Wadsworth, said her registration was mistakenly sent to a post office box where she used to collect her mail. When it was returned to the county board of elections, her right to vote was challenged. She was scheduled to appear at a hearing today to defend her eligibility.
Miller said in her lawsuit that she is pregnant and on semi-bed rest. She said her physician has advised her not to attend the hearing because of the medical risk to her unborn child.
She said she meets all requirements to vote.
Haddix, who lives in Sharon Township, said in the lawsuit she is an undecided voter whose registration information was sent mistakenly to Sharon Center rather than her mailing address.
Haddix said her 6-month-old son had an appointment with a medical specialist scheduled for the same time she was due at the Medina County challenge hearing. She said officials were forcing her to decide "between taking her son to a doctor and defending her right to vote."
Before issuing her order, Dlott conducted two closed sessions in her chambers with lawyers representing the Democrats, the six county elections boards and Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell.
Reporters from The Plain Dealer and The Washington Post were not allowed in. She also blocked lawyers from the John Kerry campaign from attending because they were not parties to the lawsuit filed by the Ohio Democratic Party.
Dlott said she will conduct a formal, open hearing Friday to consider a preliminary injunction.
Daniel Hoffheimer, head of Democrat Kerry's legal team in Ohio, said after the ruling that many of the challenges were targeting black Ohioans, a voting bloc likely to support Kerry by a huge margin.
Blackwell, a Republican who serves on a national steering committee for President Bush's re-election campaign, also was prohibited by the judge from taking action to force local boards of elections to conduct the hearings.
Blackwell's lawyers tried to distance him from the dispute and argued the secretary of state's office had no role in the hearings and should be dismissed from the case.
Virginia Conlan Whitman, the lawyer representing the Democrats, said the challenges were flawed because they contained factual errors which already have led to dismissals of 2,600 registrations in Franklin County. She said active-duty members of the armed forces were challenged in some counties but could not defend themselves at hearings because they were overseas or stationed on out-of-state military posts.
Whitman said the hearings, which had to be finished at least two days before the Nov. 2 election, would have to be rushed to meet that deadline and could lead to "discriminatory and unreliable decisions" about who could vote.
Dlott, who was appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton, is expected to rule later this week on a similar class-action that would stop other voters from being challenged when they show up at the polls on Election Day.
That case was filed Wednesday by Marian and Donald Spencer, a married couple in their 80s who are longtime Cincinnati civil-rights activists. Marian Spencer, the first black woman elected to the Cincinnati City Council, said she fears that predominantly black precincts will be targeted for the Election Day challenges.
"It is an old-time Jim Crow kind of tactic that was used in the South," she said.
Plain Dealer reporters T.C. Brown and Jesse Tinsley and Columbus Bureau Chief Sandy Theis contributed to this story.
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
bsloat@plaind.com, 513-631-4125

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