Opinion ID: 4027534
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Voting in Ohio

Text: A brief review of recent voting regulation history in Ohio provides context. In 2004, Ohio permitted absentee ballots only if registered voters asserted one of several “excuses.” See Ohio Rev. Code § 3509.02(A)(1)–(8) (2004). The timeline for voting by absentee ballot was generous: a voter could pick up a ballot 35 days before Election Day, the first five of which extended into Ohio’s voter registration period (which ended 30 days before an election). Thus, Ohio maintained a five-day overlap of its registration period and its absentee voting period, allowing residents armed with a proper excuse to both register and vote (absentee) on the same day. This “same-day registration” window became known in Ohio as “Golden Week.” R. 117, Opinion at 34, Page ID 6156. The 2004 presidential election brought special challenges to Ohio’s general voting apparatus. Among other problems, Ohio voters “faced long lines and wait-times that, at some polling places, stretched into the early morning of the following day.” Obama for America v. Husted, 697 F.3d 423, 426 (6th Cir. 2012). Largely in response to this experience, Ohio refined its absentee voting system in 2005 to permit early voting without need of an excuse. Id. Ohio residents enjoying the freedom of this “no-fault” or “no-excuse” system could vote absentee by mail or in person (“early in-person” or “EIP” voting) at their convenience. Ohio retained its preexisting absentee voting time frame. Until 2012, each of Ohio’s 88 county boards of elections retained the discretion to implement its own schedule for early in-person absentee voting. Varying schedules resulted. To remedy the inconsistencies, a task force from the Ohio Association of Election Officials (OAEO), a bipartisan association of election officials, proposed adoption of a uniform 21-day No. 16-3561 Ohio Democratic Party, et al. v. Husted, et al. Page 5 early in-person voting schedule, under which the period for “early” or “absentee” voting would start nine days after the end of the voter registration period. In 2012, Ohio passed a law based on the OAEO recommendation, but repealed it after the law became subject to a referendum. In 2013, another bipartisan task force recommended that absentee voting not be allowed until the day after the registration period closed, establishing an early voting time frame of 29 days instead of the previously recommended 21 days. On February 19, 2014, Ohio passed S.B. 238, amending Ohio Rev. Code § 3509.01 to make the first day of early absentee voting—whether early in-person or by mail—the day after the close of voter registration. This amendment effectively eliminated Golden Week and the possibility of same-day registration. Shortly before the 2014 election, the NAACP and other groups challenged S.B. 238, alleging that it disproportionally affected African Americans, thereby (1) violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by burdening African Americans’ fundamental right to vote; and (2) violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by burdening AfricanAmerican voters’ ability to participate effectively in Ohio’s political process. Though a panel of this court upheld a preliminary injunction preventing implementation of the law, see Ohio State Conference of NAACP v. Husted, 768 F.3d 524, 529 (6th Cir. 2014) (hereinafter “NAACP”), the Supreme Court stayed the injunction, Husted v. Ohio State Conference of NAACP, 135 S. Ct. 42 (2014), and the panel subsequently vacated its decision for mootness. Ohio State Conference of NAACP v. Husted, 2014 WL 10384647, at  (6th Cir. Oct. 1, 2014). Thus, the 2014 election took place with S.B. 238 in full effect. After the election, the parties to NAACP reached a settlement under which Ohio added another Sunday of early in-person voting as well as additional evening hours, and the plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed their claim challenging the 29day voting period.1 This brings us to the present action. After NAACP settled, plaintiffs in this action, the Ohio Democratic Party, the Democratic Party of Cuyahoga County, the Montgomery County Democratic Party, and three individuals (collectively referred to as “plaintiffs” or the 1 Plaintiffs in the case before us were not parties to the settlement. No. 16-3561 Ohio Democratic Party, et al. v. Husted, et al. Page 6 “Democratic Parties”), evidently finding the settlement negotiated by the NAACP to be unsatisfactory, challenged S.B. 238 (as modified per settlement) and other Ohio laws as violating the Equal Protection Clause and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, 52 U.S.C. § 10301.2 Despite subsequently acknowledging that “Ohio’s national leadership in voting opportunities is to be commended,” R. 125, Stay Order, Page ID 6302, the district court held that S.B. 238 violated the Equal Protection Clause and the Voting Rights Act based largely on what it called the “highly persuasive” reasoning of this court’s since-vacated ruling upholding a preliminary injunction in NAACP. See R. 117, Opinion at 35–36, Page ID 6156–57. Regarding plaintiffs’ equal protection challenge, the district court concluded that S.B. 238 imposed a “modest” (i.e., “more than minimal but less than significant”) disparate burden on African Americans. The “numerous opportunities to cast a ballot in Ohio, including vot[ing] by mail, in person on Election Day, and on other EIP voting days” were deemed insufficient to mitigate the burden. See R. 117, Opinion at 34–36, 42–43, Page ID 6156–58, 6164–65. Although Ohio allows numerous and convenient registration options (including registration by mail), more than four weeks of absentee voting, and more than three weeks of early in-person voting, the district court acknowledged that there are minimal postage costs associated with voting by mail and accepted what it characterized as “anecdotal evidence” that “African Americans are distrustful of voting by mail” to conclude that voting by mail may not be a suitable alternative to early in-person voting for many African-Americans. Id. at 43–44, Page ID 6165–66. The court concluded that, despite Ohio’s generous voting options, S.B. 238’s modification of Ohio’s early voting schedule resulted in a disparate burden on some AfricanAmerican voters. And despite accepting the legitimacy of Ohio’s asserted interests (preventing fraud, decreasing costs, reducing administrative burdens, and enhancing voter confidence, id. at 2 The Democratic Parties also challenged Ohio statutes: (1) establishing one early in-person voting location per county; (2) altering the number of voting machines per county; (3) revamping the requirements for unsolicited absentee-ballot mailing applications; and (4) regarding the state’s absentee and provisional ballot requirements. R. 117, Opinion at 2, Page ID 6124. The district court rejected all of these claims, and plaintiffs did not crossappeal. However, in a display of incongruity between district court judges in the same district, a separate district court in the Southern District of Ohio, fully aware of the district court’s ruling in this case, found Ohio’s very same absentee-ballot and provisional-ballot laws to constitute a “significant burden” not justified by the State’s interests. Ne. Ohio Coal. for the Homeless v. Husted, No. 2:06-CV-896, 2016 WL 3166251, at  (S.D. Ohio June 7, 2016). The court declared both laws violative of the Equal Protection Clause and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Ohio’s appeal of that decision is currently pending before a different panel of this court. No. 16-3561 Ohio Democratic Party, et al. v. Husted, et al. Page 7 49–57, Page ID 6171–79), the court held they did not justify the modest burdens imposed by the law. The court then turned to the Democratic Parties’ Voting Rights Act claim and held that S.B. 238 violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act as it “interacts with the historical and social conditions facing African Americans in Ohio to reduce their opportunity to participate in Ohio’s political process relative to other groups of voters[.]” Id. at 107, Page ID 6229.