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Suit seeks to validate provisional ballots
Saturday, November 27, 2004
James Ewinger
Plain Dealer Reporter
A national nonpartisan voters' rights group has asked an Ohio court to reinstate nearly 8,000 provisional ballots ruled invalid in Cuyahoga County.
The People for the American Way Foundation filed suit Friday in the 8th Ohio District Court of Appeals in Cleveland against Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell and the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.
Last month, a federal appeals court ruled that Blackwell was correct in directing poll workers not to count provisional ballots cast outside voters' home precincts. That was only one of a flurry of conflicting court decisions at the federal and state levels.
Cuyahoga had 24,472 provisional ballots cast in the Nov. 2 election, and 8,099 - fully a third - were invalidated. That was the largest single body of controversial ballots in any of Ohio's 88 counties.
The suit is a mandamus action, which asks a court to compel a public official to perform a duty.
The action charges that poll workers and precinct judges "were deeply confused" about how to handle the provisional ballots and that Blackwell failed to provide clear instructions.
People for the American Way wants the court to order Blackwell and the county elections board to check electronic voter-registration rolls against paper registration records, to notify each voter who cast an invalidated ballot why it was rejected, and to give that person a way to contest the invalidation.
The suit also wants ballots counted if voters cast them in the wrong places and officials failed to send them to the right polling places.
Blackwell's office directed questions about the lawsuit to the Ohio attorney general or the Cuyahoga County prosecutor's office.
David Zimmerman, an assistant county prosecutor, said Friday that he had not seen the suit and could not comment. A spokesman for the Board of Elections issued a similar response.
Leslye M. Huff, a Cleveland lawyer for the nationwide group, said it has filed no other suits of this kind elsewhere in the country "but let's not discount the possibility."