Opinion ID: 183767
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Greater Equal-Protection Problems

Text: We have also considered the claim that the district court, in ordering the Board to investigate the disputed ballots and count those miscast as a result of poll-worker error, has created greater equal-protection problems. Although there are time and resources limitations to the review that may be undertaken, the Board has implemented appropriate procedures to remedy its initial unequal treatment. Williams contends that the investigation ordered by the district court was not uniformly applied to the remaining provisional ballots, and therefore undermined the purported aim of the district court to require election officials to treat provisional ballots equally. [22] To the contrary, however, the Board followed objective guidelines in conducting its review when it implemented the directives of then-Secretary Brunner, which provided criteria for determining poll-worker error and the steps to follow to complete the investigation. R.44-3 (Directive 2010-79); R.38-10 (Directive 2010-80); R.38-6 (Directive 2010-87). Whereas the Board's consideration of evidence with respect to poll-worker error for only the 27 provisional ballots cast at its office for the wrong precinct was an arbitrary and uneven exercise of discretion by the Board in violation of state law, its subsequent review of the 849 provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct was guided by delineated standards to be applied to all such ballots. [23] We conclude that the Board's review has met the requirements of Bush v. Gore . Secretary Husted urges that the district court failed to satisfy the requirements of Bush v. Gore when it ordered a standardless investigation which was not applied to the first group of 27 ballots, and then was inconsistently implemented with respect to the remaining ballots. Husted Amicus Br. at 14. But, as discussed above, the Board's review of the wrong-precinct provisional ballots was guided by objective criteria provided by Secretary Brunner to effectuate the district court's order. Moreover, the guidance rejected by the Supreme Court in Bush is different from that used here. The intent of the voter standard invalidated in Bush was being implemented differently by different counties with respect to the same presidential election. Bush, 531 U.S. at 105-07, 121 S.Ct. 525. Because of a lack of specific standards to ensure its equal application, id. at 106, 121 S.Ct. 525, each of the counties used varying standards to determine what was a legal vote, id. at 107, 121 S.Ct. 525. Here, however, the district court's order applied to only one jurisdictional entityHamilton Countyand one raceHamilton County Juvenile Court Judge. This is not a situation in which a court is announcing a standard to be interpreted differently by multiple jurisdictions, resulting in the unequal counting of votes across counties. Instead, the district court is requiring the Hamilton County Board of Elections to review all deficient provisional ballots within the county under the same standard, and not just those cast at one particular location. Therefore, the district court's order, unlike the statewide order in Bush, does not give rise to inter-jurisdictional differences in how the order is implemented. We recognize that whatever review the Board conducts must be limited in some way. But given that the Board chose to consider evidence of poll-worker error with respect to the first group of 27 ballots, the district court did not abuse its discretion in requiring the Board also to consider evidence of poll-worker error for similarly situated ballots. We do not fault the district court, after analyzing the equal-protection claim at the preliminary injunction stage, for providing the state wide berth to design and implement the specific procedures for complying with the district court's order. Defendants and Secretary Husted have repeatedly pointed to the particular federalism concerns in the context of elections. To the extent that Defendants argue that the procedures ordered by then-Secretary Brunner go beyond what is required under equal protection, they could have raised that argument to the district court. To the extent that Secretary Brunner ordered an investigation more thorough than state law permits (as determined by Painter ) or than federal constitutional law requires (a determination we leave for the district court in the first instance), the district court did not err in considering the resulting evidence.
It has also been argued that the district court's equal-protection analysis, which focused on countywide equal treatment of ballots cast in the wrong precinct because of poll-worker error, created another equal-protection problem one level up. That is, certain wrong-precinct ballots are ordered to be counted only in Hamilton County, and not in the rest of Ohio. According to Secretary Husted, the district court would be required to order the same investigative process statewide that was applied to Hamilton County's provisional ballots in order to avoid subjecting provisional ballots across the state to differential treatment. This particular Board, however, did not treat equally the provisional ballots cast within its own county, and that is the equal-protection problem that we address. Only voters in Hamilton County are eligible to vote for Hamilton County Juvenile Court Judge. Because voters in other counties may not cast votes for a local judgeship, remedying poll-worker error with respect to votes in this race does not result in unequal treatment of voters outside Hamilton County. The counting of provisional ballots in a Hamilton County race does not impact whether voters who cast ballots in other races are treated equally when compared to similarly situated voters in those races. Statewide equal-protection implications could arise, however, to the extent that the ballots at issue include candidates for district and statewide races that transcend county lines. See Bush, 531 U.S. at 106-07, 121 S.Ct. 525. But, as a practical matter, no statewide 2010 election is subject to a vote-counting dispute, and all statewide elections are now deemed final under Ohio law. See OHIO REV.CODE ANN. § 3505.32(A) (providing an eighty-one-day deadline from the date of the election to amend the canvass of election returns). And, to the extent that Ohio election procedures present equal-protection and due-process problems in local contests in other counties, they may be resolved in separate litigation. Furthermore, Hunter argues that a statewide equal-protection problem already exists, regardless of whether Hamilton County provisional ballots are investigated. Hunter provided evidence that four other counties in Ohio counted provisional ballots cast in the correct location but wrong precinct in the November 2010 election. R.20-7 (Board Minutes for Lucas, Seneca, Williams, and Trumbull counties). This evidence suggests that, despite the contrary instruction of Ohio law, individual counties have already adopted their own standards and applied differential treatment to provisional ballots. In any event, we need not address whether either the initial counting of the 27 miscast ballots or the subsequent provisional-ballot investigation rises to a level of unconstitutional inequality when considered in a hypothetical statewide challenge. The inconsistent treatment of provisional ballots across Ohio counties and the precise degree of inequality from county to county tolerated by the Constitution is not at issue here. See Daniel P. Tokaji, Leave It to the Lower Courts: On Judicial Intervention in Election Administration, 68 OHIO ST. L.J. 1065, 1069-70 (2007) (describing application of the principle of equal treatment to voters across counties in matters of election administration). We instead affirm the likelihood that the intrajursidiction unequal treatment undertaken by the Hamilton County Board is constitutionally impermissible. The Board arbitrarily treated one set of provisional ballots differently from others, and that unequal treatment violates the Equal Protection Clause.
At oral argument, the Board raised the issue of voter dilution. Amicus ORP also raised the issue, arguing that the counting of provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct because of poll worker error ... harms every Hamilton County voter who cast a legal vote in the correct precinct. ORP 2d Amicus Br. at 21-22. According to ORP, these votes were cast in violation of Ohio law, and to include such votes among the rest of the votes will dilute the power of those other, valid votes. Id. at 22 (citing Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 555, 84 S.Ct. 1362, 12 L.Ed.2d 506 (1964)). But the issue of vote dilution turns, first, on whether unlawful votes have been counted. See Purcell, 549 U.S. at 4, 127 S.Ct. 5 (discussing dilution caused by voter fraud). Invalidating ballots cast in the wrong precinct relies on Painter's statement of state law that such votes may not be counted under Ohio law regardless of poll-worker error. We do not resolve the question of whether refusal to count votes miscast solely due to poll-worker error violates due process. Therefore, we do not presume that invalidating such votes complies with the Constitution. Furthermore, any compelling state interest in preventing the counting of invalid votes must be weighed against the voters' strong interest in exercising the fundamental political right to vote, Purcell, 549 U.S. at 4, 127 S.Ct. 5 (internal quotation marks omitted), the very right at issue in this case. In sum, the Board was required to review all provisional ballots. In doing so, it chose to consider evidence of poll-worker error for some ballots, but not others, thereby treating voters' ballots arbitrarily, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. We therefore conclude that there is a strong likelihood of success on this equal-protection claim which weighs heavily in favor of the district court's grant of a preliminary injunction.