Opinion ID: 770321
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Ruby Coburn

Text: 63 Ruby Coburn was a qualified voter in the City. She requested help in voting on the ground of inability to read well and nerves. Tr. 418, 429. Ms. Coburn asked LaSaundra Johnson for help. Tr. 463. Both Ms. Coburn and Ms. Johnson testified that Mr. Howe gave Ms. Johnson a sheet of paper with an amendment on it, and told her that she had to read that paper before she could help Ms. Coburn in voting. Ms. Johnson refused to read the paper, became upset, and left. Ms. Coburn was then offered assistance from one (apparently not two) poll workers, but she declined. She voted on the machine without assistance. However, because she could not read well, she voted only for about two candidates. 64 Mr. Howe testified that he never stopped Ms. Johnson from helping anyone, Tr. 789, nor did he make anyone read an amendment as a condition to assisting another person to vote, Tr. 790. We are firmly convinced that Mr. Howe's testimony was unreliable. He himself conceded that his memory was fading, and his testimony with respect to the Dixon incident, recounted above, was clearly incorrect, as the videotape showed. Requiring Ms. Johnson to read an amendment (the reference may be to the title of one of the constitutional amendments on the ballot at the time) was improper. It is of course true that Ms. Johnson would need to read in order to assist Ms. Coburn with a reading disability, but that was not the concern of the poll workers. Ms. Coburn had a right to ask anyone to help her, and how well that person could read was no one else's business. We hold that the finding against Ruby Coburn's claim is clearly erroneous, so far as the defendant Howe is concerned. The evidence with respect to the other defendants is either slight or nonexistent, and the judgment in their favor on Ms. Coburn's claim will be affirmed.