Opinion ID: 4027534
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: State’s Interests

Text: Because S.B. 238 is minimally burdensome and nondiscriminatory, we apply a deferential standard of review akin to rational basis and Ohio need only advance “important regulatory interests” to satisfy the Anderson-Burdick analysis. See Burdick, 504 U.S. at 434; Ohio Council, 814 F.3d at 338 (plaintiffs bear a “heavy constitutional burden” to demonstrate 5 Obama for America, 697 F.3d 436, held that a facially discriminatory law granting military personnel additional voting days was unlikely to survive constitutional scrutiny. No. 16-3561 Ohio Democratic Party, et al. v. Husted, et al. Page 16 that a state’s minimally burdensome law is unconstitutional). Here, the interests advanced by the State are analogous to, and even better substantiated than those accepted as sufficient in Crawford. It follows that the State’s present interests pass muster under Anderson-Burdick: they justify the minimal burden potentially visited on some African-American voters as a result of S.B. 238. However, even if we were to accept the district court’s characterization of the burden as “modest,” which may conceivably trigger a slightly less deferential review under the “flexible” Anderson-Burdick framework, Ohio’s proffered interests are still “sufficiently weighty” to justify it. Ohio contends S.B. 238 serves four legitimate interests: “(1) preventing voter fraud; (2) reducing costs; (3) reducing administrative burdens; and (4) increasing voter confidence and preventing voter confusion.” R. 117, Opinion at 49, Page ID 6171. The district court rejected Ohio’s justifications, noting that “while they may be legitimate,” the State’s “insufficient evidence” shows they are “minimal, unsupported, or not accomplished by S.B. 238.” Id. at 56, Page ID 6178. The district court demanded too much. For regulations that are not unduly burdensome, the Anderson-Burdick analysis never requires a state to actually prove “the sufficiency of the ‘evidence.’” Munro v. Socialist Workers Party, 479 U.S. 189, 195 (1986) (explaining that a contrary rule would “would invariably lead to endless court battles over the sufficiency of the ‘evidence’”). Rather, at least with respect to a minimally burdensome regulation triggering rational-basis review, we accept a justification’s sufficiency as a “legislative fact” and defer to the findings of Ohio’s legislature so long as its findings are reasonable. See Frank, 768 F.3d at 750; see also Munro, 479 U.S. at 195–96. Voter Fraud and Public Confidence. Ohio first justifies S.B. 238 by asserting that it decreases the opportunity for voter fraud arising from same-day registration during Golden Week. The district court discounted Ohio’s interest in combating potential fraud because, “while the general opinion evidence [showed] that Golden Week increases the opportunity for voter fraud . . . actual instances of voter fraud during Golden Week are extremely rare” and “[t]his very limited evidence of voter fraud is insufficient to justify the modest burden imposed by S.B. 238.” R. 117, Opinion at 49, Page ID 6171–72. But we do not “require elaborate, empirical verification of the weightiness of the State’s asserted justifications.” Timmons v. Twin Cities No. 16-3561 Ohio Democratic Party, et al. v. Husted, et al. Page 17 Area New Party, 520 U.S. 351, 364 (1997). Moreover, such a view is totally irreconcilable with Crawford, which upheld an unquestionably more burdensome regulation requiring all in-person voters in Indiana to maintain and present “photo identification issued by the government” even where the “record contain[ed] no evidence of any such fraud actually occurring in Indiana at any time in its history.” Crawford, 553 U.S. at 194–96 (Stevens, J., op.). The Court had “no question about the legitimacy or importance of the State’s interest in counting only the votes of eligible voters,” id. at 196, and because “the risk of voter fraud [is] real [and] . . . could affect the outcome of a close election,” the Court declined to examine Indiana’s total lack of evidence that the photo identification law would actually preclude fraud in the way it was designed to. Id. at 195–96. Here, Ohio offers inconclusive, but concrete evidence of voter fraud during Golden Week’s same-day registration period. Under Crawford’s teaching, working to achieve that goal is a “sufficiently weighty” interest to justify the minimal burden experienced by some AfricanAmerican voters. Crawford, 553 U.S. at 191 (Stevens, J., op.). Running in tandem with the State’s interest in preventing voter fraud is its closely related, but independently significant justification for eliminating same-day registration: safeguarding public confidence by eliminating “even appearances of fraud.” The Crawford court accepted this justification as practically self-evidently true, observing that a state’s “electoral system cannot inspire public confidence if no safeguards exist to deter or detect fraud or to confirm the identity of voters.” Crawford, 553 U.S. at 197 (Stevens, J., op.). Unlike the district court, we adhere to Crawford’s approach and conclude that the State’s purpose of preventing potential fraud and promoting public confidence is in furtherance of legitimate and important regulatory interests. The district court was not only dissatisfied with Ohio’s evidence, but also with Ohio’s method of combatting potential fraud. Part of the State’s fraud-based rationale arose from the bipartisan OAEO recommendation that early voting begin only after the close of registration, because overlapping registration and voting periods were deemed to constitute “the greatest time for voter fraud to occur.” R. 103, Ward Tr., Page ID 5329; R. 104, Damschroder Tr., Page ID 5448 (explaining that Golden Week “presented a unique risk for voter fraud where a person could, at one event, at one moment, both register to vote, request an absentee ballot and cast an No. 16-3561 Ohio Democratic Party, et al. v. Husted, et al. Page 18 absentee ballot and then disappear”). S.B. 238 addressed this concern by eliminating Golden Week’s same-day registration. The district court, again relying on our vacated decision in NAACP, 768 F.3d at 547, attacked the efficacy of eliminating same-day registration in targeting potential fraud by pointing to a hypothetical voter who could still register to vote 30 days before the election and then return to cast an early in-person ballot on the 29th day before the election— in theory, voting before the board of elections completed its mail verification process. R. 117, Opinion at 51, Page ID 6173. Yet, our task (especially with respect to minimally burdensome laws) is neither to craft the “best” approach, nor “to impose our own idea of democracy upon the Ohio state legislature.” Libertarian Party, 462 F.3d at 587; see also Crawford, 553 U.S. at 196 (Stevens, J., op.) (“While the most effective method of preventing election fraud may well be debatable, the propriety of doing so is perfectly clear.”).6 Rather, we simply call balls and strikes and apply a generous strike zone when the state articulates legitimate and reasonable justifications for minimally burdensome, non-discriminatory election regulations.7 Given the weight afforded to State measures targeting potential fraud (even without evidentiary support) in Crawford; and given the Court’s hesitation to scrutinize the regulation’s fraud-fighting effectiveness, we accept Ohio’s goal of reducing potential voter fraud as an “important regulatory interest” sufficient to justify the minimal burden identified in this case. See Ohio Council, 814 F.3d at 338. Moreover, Ohio offers additional justifications. Administrative Burdens. Asserting that its boards of elections are extremely busy with finalizing ballots, running ballots through voting machines for “logic and accuracy testing,” processing the registration wave that arrives near the close of registration, and recruiting and 6 As one Ohio witness asked rhetorically, “if you get a weather forecast that says there’s a chance of rain, do you run around and open all your windows so you have a wider open window, or do you close all your windows when there is a chance of rain[?]” R. 103, Ward Tr., Page ID 5329. Ohio’s elimination of same-day registration to limit or mitigate potential fraud is a reasonable step, even if it will not erase all possibilities of fraud. 7 See e.g., Hearing Before the Senate Judiciary Comm. on the Nomination of The Honorable John G. Roberts, U.S.C.J., to be the Chief Justice of the United States, 109th Cong. (Sept. 12, 2005), available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/13/AR2005091300693 html (statement of John G. Roberts) (“[I]t's my job to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat.”); see also Weber v. Shelley, 347 F.3d 1101, 1107 (9th Cir. 2003) (“[I]t is the job of democratically-elected representatives to weigh the pros and cons of various balloting systems. So long as their choice is reasonable and neutral, it is free from judicial second-guessing.”). No. 16-3561 Ohio Democratic Party, et al. v. Husted, et al. Page 19 training poll workers, Ohio justifies S.B. 238 as reflecting a realization of the need to balance early-voting options with the burdens on boards of elections. Again, the district court rejected the State’s justification because the “only evidence in support of that notion [was] that in 2010, the Ohio Association of Election Officials [OAEO] task force, aware of these administrative concerns, recommended that early voting begin twenty-one days before Election Day” and the State failed to prove that the boards would be “unable to manage” the administrative burdens and costs associated with Golden Week. R. 117, Opinion at 55 & n.18, Page ID 6177. Again, the district court demanded too much. We agree rather with the Supreme Court that legislatures “should be permitted to respond to potential deficiencies in the electoral process with foresight rather than reactively.” Munro, 479 U.S. at 195. Requiring that a “[s]tate’s political system sustain some level of damage before the legislature could take corrective action” is neither practical, nor constitutionally compelled. Id.8 Again, we note that S.B. 238 is minimally burdensome and facially non-discriminatory, and is therefore not violative of equal protection if it advances “important regulatory interests.” Ohio Council, 814 F.3d at 338. Ohio’s proffered interests of preventing voter fraud, increasing voter confidence by eliminating appearances of voter fraud, and easing administrative burdens on boards of elections are undoubtedly “important regulatory interests,” see Crawford, 553 U.S. at 194–96 (Stevens, J., op.). The State’s interests thus provide ample justification. We hold that plaintiffs have failed to establish their “heavy constitutional burden” of demonstrating that S.B. 238 is unconstitutional. Ohio Council, 814 F.3d at 338. As a final note, the district court failed to consider Crawford when evaluating Ohio’s interests due to its nearly wholesale reliance on our vacated decision in NAACP, which went to great lengths to distinguish Crawford’s ready acceptance of voter fraud and voter confidence as sufficient justifications for a regulation that imposed only a “limited burden on voter’s rights.” Crawford, 553 U.S. at 203 (Stevens, J., op.). To the extent it relied on our now-vacated decision, 8 The same is true regarding the district court’s outright rejection of Ohio’s cost savings arguments. Though saving tens of thousands of dollars may be a “minimal” benefit when compared to the overall election budgets, R. 117, Opinion at 53–54, Page ID 6175–76, we reject the district court’s dubious and blanket proposition that “where more than minimal burdens on voters are established, the State must demonstrate that such costs would actually be burdensome.” Id. at 6176 (citing NAACP, 768 F.3d at 548) (emphasis added). Fiscal responsibility, even if only incrementally served, is undeniably a legitimate and reasonable legislative purpose. No. 16-3561 Ohio Democratic Party, et al. v. Husted, et al. Page 20 the district court erred. NAACP is a different case, as S.B. 238 at that time still included the Secretary of State’s Directive 2014-17 that “eliminate[ed] all evening voting hours for nonpresidential elections and [] provid[ed] only one Sunday of [early in-person] voting.” NAACP, 768 F.3d at 539; see R. 127-14, Settlement, PID 6775–77 (removing Directive 2014-17 and establishing an agreed-upon voting schedule). NAACP therefore analyzed Ohio’s law as one imposing a burden that was “significant although not severe,” requiring more justification than the “modest” burden the district court identified in this case, an interest we here hold to be minimal. The district court therefore used NAACP as an imperfect legend, and applied it to a different map. Its reliance on the vacated NAACP decision was not sound. Moreover, the vacated opinion in NAACP evinced a certain dissatisfaction with the Crawford Court’s ruling and a preference for the view of dissenting Justices. To the extent the district court, by relying on NAACP, effectively resuscitated reasoning at odds with the holding of Crawford, the district court ignored a fundamental of our “hierarchical judicial system,” which precludes a lower court from “declar[ing] a statute unconstitutional just because [it] thinks . . . that the dissent was right and the majority wrong.” Frank, 768 F.3d at 750. “When evaluating a neutral, nondiscriminatory regulation of voting procedure, ‘[w]e must keep in mind that [a] ruling of unconstitutionality frustrates the intent of the elected representatives of the people.’” Crawford, 553 U.S. at 203 (Stevens, J., op.) (quoting Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New Eng., 546 U.S. 320, 329 (2006)). Plaintiffs prefer that we adopt a broad rule that any expansion of voting rights must remain on the books forever. Such a rule would have a chilling effect on the democratic process: states would have little incentive to pass bills expanding voting access if, once in place, they could never be modified in a way that might arguably burden some segment of the voting population’s right to vote. Accepting the “long recognized . . . role of the States as laboratories for devising solutions to difficult legal problems,” Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Indep. Redistricting Comm’n, 135 S. Ct. 2652, 2673 (2015), we hold that imposing such a one-way ratchet is incompatible with the “flexible” Anderson-Burdick framework. Applying Anderson-Burdick to S.B. 238, we hold that the State’s justifications easily outweigh and sufficiently justify the minimal burden that some voters may experience. No. 16-3561 Ohio Democratic Party, et al. v. Husted, et al. Page 21 Accordingly, plaintiffs’ equal protection challenge fails and the district court’s decision must, in this respect, be reversed.