A Tight Election May Be Tangled in Legal Battles
Two court rulings barring the Wisconsin voter ID law that Gov. Scott Walker signed last year are being appealed by the state.
The November presidential election, widely expected to rest on a final blitz of advertising and furious campaigning, may also hinge nearly as much on last-minute legal battles over when and how ballots should be cast and counted, particularly if the race remains tight in battleground states.
In the last few weeks, nearly a dozen decisions in federal and state courts on early voting, provisional ballots and voter identification requirements have driven the rules in conflicting directions, some favoring Republicans demanding that voters show more identification to guard against fraud and others backing Democrats who want to make voting as easy as possible.
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In Florida, a federal court ruled last month that a year-old state law that reduced the number of early voting days to 8 from 12 could not be enforced in 5 of the 67 counties that are covered under the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. But the court suggested that extending the hours of voting over the eight-day period in those five counties would satisfy the federal requirements. Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, was able to persuade election officials in four of the counties to extend their daily hours, but the supervisor of elections in Monroe County, which includes the Florida Keys, refused, saying that the county would maintain an early voting period of 12 days.
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Two groups on the other side of the political spectrum, Demos and Common Cause, are issuing a report on Monday, Bullies at the Ballot Box, that warns of a real danger that voters will face overzealous volunteers who take the law into their own hands to target voters they deem suspect.
The voters that the groups say they are most worried about are members of minority groups.
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