Election-Campaign Law

Reflections on Footnote 24 of the 6th Circuit Hunter Decision

By Charles Stewart III

The Election Law @ Moritz web site has published a quick analysis I did concerning an aside found in the Hunter v. Hamilton County Board of Elections by a panel of the 6th circuit court of appeals. Hunter is the case involving a juvenile judge race in Hamilton County (Cincinnati), Ohio, in which quite a number of voters cast provisional ballots, having been directed to the wrong table in a multi-precinct voting location.

The aside, in footnote 24, speculates that there may be disproportionate effects of Ohio’s law, which requires that provisional ballots not be counted even when voters vote out-of-precinct at the direction of the poll worker.  Using data from the EAC’s 2008 Election Administration and Voting Survey, I show that the conjecture is only weakly supported, if at all.  More important is the large amount of discretion exercised by local election officials in the use and rejection of provisional ballots, which is evident in the EAC statistics.

The link to that post is here.

Full post as published by Election Updates on January 28, 2011 (boomark / email).