State drops court fight to try to show 2004 election was fair
By JOHN McCARTHY
Associated Press Writer
Date: February 02, 2006
COLUMBUS, Ohio_The state has dropped its appeal of a lawsuit originally filed by
Democrats to alleviate long voting lines in the 2004 presidential election.
The state had tried to keep the lawsuit going to try to prove Ohio conducted a
legal election.
The case, dismissed Monday at the state's request, was brought by the Ohio
Democratic Party against Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican, and
two county boards of election on Election Day. The party sought to alleviate
long lines at polling places in two counties.
Two lawsuits still are pending from the 2004 election in Ohio, whose 20
electoral votes gave Bush all he needed to win the presidency.
At the Democrats' request, U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley ordered
Blackwell's office and the Knox and Franklin county officials to provide
alternative methods of voting the night of the election.
The polls remained open past their 7:30 p.m. closing time to accommodate anyone
who was in line at that time. Some voters waited in line more than seven hours
and the last ballots were not cast until early the next day.
Democrat John Kerry conceded to President Bush the day after the election when
his campaign determined he could not significantly cut into Bush's Ohio lead,
which wound up being 118,000 votes.
After Kerry conceded, the Democrats asked Marbley to dismiss the case. However,
the Ohio attorney general's office, representing Blackwell, tried to keep it
alive. Marbley dismissed the case in August and Attorney General Jim Petro
appealed to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Blackwell spokesman Carlo
LoParo said his office chose to remove itself from the case.
Petro asked the appeals court to dismiss the case on Jan. 12.
Petro spokeswoman Kim Norris said Thursday that passage of a new law that allows
absentee voting by any registered voter and new federal guidelines that will
increase the number of voting machines available should end the problem of long
lines at polling places.
"The specific argument we were making is now moot," Norris said.
In one of the remaining lawsuits, the National Voting Rights Institute alleges
irregularities in the recount of the 2004 election. Libertarian Party candidate
Michael Badnarik and Green Party candidate David Cobb paid for the recount,
despite collecting less than 0.3 percent of the vote. The recount cut into
Bush's lead, but not enough to change the result.
The other lawsuit, filed by the League of Women Voters of Ohio, says an
inadequate statewide elections system has violated the equal protection and due
process of some Ohio voters. While it does not challenge the 2004 election
results, the lawsuit says the system treats voters differently based on where
they vote.
The state believes the lawsuit is frivolous and should be dismissed, LoParo
said. Many of the goals the suit seeks have been met, LoParo said.
Both lawsuits are to be heard this summer by U.S. District Judge James Carr in
Toledo.
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On the Net:
Ohio attorney general:
http://www.ag.state.oh.us Ohio secretary of state:
http://www.sos.state.oh.us National Voting Rights Institute:
http://www.nvri.org Ohio League of Women Voters:
http://www.lwvohio.org ***************************
Also see this post in Elections Forums:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x411724