Ohio state officials face a federal court order that they allow a significant expansion of ballot drop box use, after the state bristled at a more moderate approach laid out by the judge.
The fight over whether local election officials can set up more than one drop-off location per county has played out in several different courtrooms since Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced in August that he was limiting drop box use.
At the time of the announcement, LaRose said he did not oppose drop boxes as a matter of policy but believed that their use at locations other than county election offices was impermissible under state law.
Despite multiple courts now saying that that interpretation of state law is incorrect, LaRose has stood by limiting their use, taking only one small step earlier this week to let counties set up multiple drop-off options at the same county board locations.
LaRose has also already appealed the latest federal court order.
U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster ordered on Thursday evening that LaRose permit counties to set up multiple locations, including staffed sites, where voters can hand over ballots to election officials, as well as unmanned drop boxes.
He said that the Secretary had not presented in the case “any legitimate reason to prohibit a county board of elections from utilizing off-site drop boxes and/or off-site delivery of ballots to staff” while also shooting down nebulous claims of fraud prevention.
“No evidence was introduced at the hearing to support the conclusory reference to fraud in the Secretary’s brief,” the judge said. The other reason for the restrictions cited by the state — a desire for uniformity among how many drop boxes each county would have — made little sense as well, according to the judge.
“The problem with this rationale is that all counties are not equal in population or in geographic size,” Poster said. “Giving all voters an equal opportunity would require multiple drop boxes in heavily populated counties to account for their population.”
The Thursday night order was a reversal of course from a dismissal of the case the judge granted on Tuesday, which was a partial victory for LaRose.
Poster had put the litigation mostly on hold, while a lawsuit brought in state court challenging the restrictions proceeded. Both a district state court and an appeals court said multiple drop boxes per county would not violate state law — but the appeals court said it was within LaRose’s discretion whether to allow such a system.
After the state appeals court order, LaRose issued a new directive that said county boards could set up multiple drop boxes as long as they were on their election office premises. The federal judge, however, in his dismissal order earlier this week, read the new directive to also sanction off-site drop offs (at places like public libraries) where election staff would be deployed to accept the ballots in person.
He acknowledged that “off-site staff collection of absentee ballots may not have all the advantages of off-site drop boxes” but he expressed a desire to end the litigation.
When state officials made clear that the judge was misinterpreting their intentions with the new directive, the federal challengers returned to the judge to reconsider the dismissal order, prompting the Thursday decision ordering the more expansive drop box regime.
Polster also refused to put his order on hold while it was appealed.
“[W]e are in the middle of the worst pandemic in a century coupled with reasonable concern over the ability of the U.S. Postal Service to handle what will undoubtedly be the largest number of absentee voters in Ohio’s history,” he said, while urging that
“it is time for this litigation to end.”
In a statement, LaRose’s office defended his appeal.
“Voting has begun, and Ohio’s elections are safe, secure, and accessible,” LaRose spokeswoman Maggie Sheehan said. “The place to make changes in how we run our elections is the statehouse, not the courthouse.”
LaRose is just trying to run the clock out…the longer this goes on, the fewer votes that can be put in drop boxes in the big Democratic cities, and the more likely the Republicans hold Ohio. It’s a disgusting play, and shows that all Republicans are in it together when it comes to suppressing the votes of the American people. Good on the judge for giving counties the chance to put drop boxes anywhere that is helpful, hopefully the Democratic counties can turn that around quickly and help people vote.
We really need new voting rights legislation at the federal level that protects people’s right to vote without interference. I suspect it will, once again, be one of the first bills the House passes in January, but it needs to go through this time, and survive thousands of Republican lawsuits, and not have holes in it that Republicans can use to cheat. Tough order, but this is one issue that just has to be done so that we get people voting…the more people that vote, the better for the nation.
LaRose should understand by now that his attempts to thwart democracy are doomed to failure and that by trying to suppress the vote, he does little besides guarantee he will be a target in due time.
One more thing that will be pushed to the soon-to-be-stacked SCOTUS.
It’s the only play Rs have left until the court is expanded at which point they will have none.
I know he’s trying to run out the clock and suppress the vote, but I think it may well backfire. I voted yesterday in Columbus, a pretty Democratic city. The line was long, but kept moving so I only had to wait 20 minutes. People were coming in and dropping off absentee ballots the entire time I waited in line. Metropolitan areas, which trend Democratic, have public transportation that can be taken to the BOE, rural, Republican counties, not so much. We will see how this plays out, but I think it’s a bad idea strategy. Also this is just begging for a Constitutional Amendment to move to mail in voting and require multiple drop boxes per county.
Husted, and now LaRose, where da fuck do they find these shits?