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Ervice Emps. Int'l Union v. Husted
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Validity Called into Doubt
Michael John Hunter, Cathrine J. Harshman, Hunter Carnahan & Shoub & Byard, Columbus, OH, Barbara J. Chisholm, Danielle E. Leonard, Stacey M. Leyton, Stephen P. Berzon, Altshuler Berzon LLP, San Francisco, CA, Donita Judge, Penda Hair, Uzoma Nkwonta, Advancement Project, Washington, DC, for Plaintiffs.
Colleen Marie McCafferty, David Todd Stevenson, Cincinnati, OH, David Gregory Lambert, Prosecuting Attorney's Office, Cleveland, OH, Nick A. Soulas, Jr., Franklin County Prosecutor's Office, Columbus, OH, for Defendant.
PLENARY OPINION AND ORDER
These two related cases 1 are before the Court for determination of the following matters: first, the Motion to Intervene filed by the Proposed Intervenors Roberta Van Atta, Emilie Illson, Thomas Kelly, and Charles Pennell in Service Employees International Union, Local 1 et al. v. Husted (“SEIU”) (“Motion to Intervene,” Dkt. 65); second, the Motion for Preliminary Injunction filed by the Plaintiffs in SEIU (“Motion for Preliminary Injunction,” Dkt. 4); and third, the Motion to Modify the Consent Decree filed by the Plaintiffs in Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless et al. v. Husted (“NEOCH”) (“Motion to Modify,” Dkt. 288).
The SEIU Plaintiffs' Motion for Preliminary Injunction seeks to enjoin specific provisions of Ohio's election code that disqualify provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct or cast with deficiencies in the ballot envelope form, when the ballot's deficiency is the result of an error by the poll worker. Similarly, the NEOCH Motion to Modify requests that the Court expands the terms of the NEOCH Consent Decree (“Decree,” Dkt. 210) to state that the county boards of elections (“Boards”) may not reject a provisional ballot cast by a voter who uses only the last four digits of his or her social security number as identification because of poll-worker error. Because the requested relief in the Motion to Modify is encompassed within the Plaintiffs' proposed injunction in the Motion for Preliminary Injunction,2 and because the basis for relief in the Motion to Modify depends on the determination of the constitutional violations at issue in the SEIU case, the Court will address the merits of the SEIU motions first.
These cases together represent the turbulent saga of Ohio's provisional voting regime. On January 31, 2006, Ohio's comprehensive election reform bill, House Bill 3, was passed by the Ohio General Assembly and signed into law. Shortly after the November 2006 general election, the NEOCH Plaintiffs brought their initial challenge to Ohio's amended voter identification requirements. See NEOCH v. Brunner, No. C2–06–CV–896 (S.D.Ohio). The NEOCH lawsuit alleges, inter alia,that Ohio's voter identification laws violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. The parties in NEOCH initially resolved the lawsuit prior to any final adjudication on the merits of Plaintiffs' constitutional claims by entering into the Decree in April 2010. The Decree, “among other provisions, mandated that the Board ‘may not reject a provisional ballot cast by a voter, who uses only the last four digits of his or her social security number as identification’ if certain deficiencies in the...
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