Republican Challenges To Voters Loom Across The U.S.

The appeals court said that while it was in the public interest that registered voters cast ballots freely, there was also "strong public interest in permitting legitimate statutory processes to operate to preclude voting by those who are not entitled to vote."

The ruling, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, reversed two lower courts that had blocked the challenges just hours before. It also came as squadrons of lawyers from both parties

in Ohio and other swing states from Pennsylvania to Florida to New Mexico were preparing for Election Day skirmishes that will include using arcane laws that allow challenges at the polls. The cases may foreshadow lawsuits that are likely to be filed in any state crucial to the Electoral College calculus.

The appeals court said the Republicans could put 3,500 challengers inside polling places. Democrats also planned to send more than 2,000 monitors to the polls, though they said those people would not challenge voters.

The Republicans say that challenging, a practice that has been allowed under Ohio law for decades but rarely used, weeds out fraud often missed by election workers. Democrats assert that the challenges disproportionately single out low-income and minority voters, which Republicans deny.

The battle over Election Day challenges has been most intense in Ohio, not only because the race here was so close and so vital to President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry, but also because the Republican Party had larger and more aggressive plans to challenge voters here than in other states.

In their separate rulings in the lower courts barring the challengers, Judge Susan Dlott of U.S. District Court in Cincinnati and Judge John Adams in Akron agreed that procedures already existed to prevent fraud at the voting place. And they said that challenges inside polling stations might create chaos and delays that could intimidate voters.

In seeking the delicate balance between preventing fraud and upholding voting rights, the judges said, the scales should tip toward voting rights.

"Voter intimidation severely burdens the right to vote, and prevention of such intimidation is a compelling state interest," wrote Dlott

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http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/11/02/news/ohio.html