Suit challenging Ohio punch-card ballots is first in US to go to trial
CLEVELAND -- Four years after Florida's hanging chads captivated a nation and fewer than 100 days before what could be another tight presidential vote, this swing state's punch-card voting system is being challenged in court.
The trial, set to begin today, is the first in the nation, according to voting specialists. Lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union against several other states have been settled with agreements that punch-card ballots will be replaced.
But even a victory by the ACLU in Ohio is not expected to bring change before this year's presidential election, because there would be too little time to make a conversion, specialists said.
The ACLU wants all punch-card ballots in the state removed before November, saying the system causes errors that lead to undercounting of votes from members of minority groups. "From our point of view, the case is about providing a system for registering and counting votes in the state that is as reliable as possible in a system that treats every voter the same way," said Richard Saphire, a University of Dayton law professor working on the ACLU case.
The ballots are used in 69 of Ohio's 88 counties, representing nearly 73 percent of registered voters.
The ACLU argues that these ballots are more likely to go uncounted than votes cast with other systems and that use of the ballots violates the voting rights of blacks, most of whom live in punch-card counties. The lawsuit claims the system violates the 14th Amendment, which guarantees due process and equal protection.
The state says it's working as fast as it can to replace punch cards, but problems with electronic voting technology have stalled the effort.
"They're claiming that the state has been denying the right to vote to African-Americans," said Rich Coglianese, a lawyer defending the state. "It's our position that the state has not denied the right to vote to anybody, and the evidence will never be able to show that."
Michael I. Shamos, a Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist and voting technology consultant, said that although he believes "punch-card voting is the worst form of voting ever devised by mankind," the ACLU will have a difficult time proving the constitutional issues.
"The reason for that is those machines are not racially specific. No one's targeting certain minorities for the use of those machines," he said.
Punch-card balloting gained notoriety during the 2000 presidential election in Florida, where problems with the ballots led to 36 days of legal wrangling until George W. Bush was declared the winner of the state, and thus the White House, by 537 votes.
In a poll of Ohio voters released last week by the American Research Group, Bush was tied with presumptive Democratic nominee John F. Kerry.
The ACLU filed similar claims against Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, and California. All but the Georgia case were settled when the states agreed to stop using punch-card voting.
