Opinion ID: 183767
Heading Depth: 6
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Board's Review of Wrong-Precinct Ballots

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.