Groups Challenge Voter Intimidation Provision in Ohio

by Jonah Goldman

On August 29, 2006, the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio along with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Brennan Center, and the ACLU Voting Rights Project filed suit in Federal Court for the Northern District of Ohio in Cleveland challenging a section of Ohio House Bill 3.

Read the complaint here.

The provision would allow poll workers to inquire if a voter is a naturalized citizen and require those voters to provide proof that they were naturalized. If they cannot provide proof at the polling place, the voter may cast a provisional ballot but has to go to the Board of Elections with documentation within 10 days of the election.

“The law undermines our nation’s commitment to equal representation at the polls by singling out one group of U.S. Citizens and unnecessarily requiring them to fulfill additional requirements in order to cast a ballot. This requirement is undemocratic, unconstitutional and unfair,” said Jon Greenbaum, Director of the Voting Rights Project at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

The suit also claims that allowing poll workers to challenge someone’s ability to vote based on where they were born will open the door to ethnic and racial profiling and will almost certainly discourage voting by racial minorities and other immigrant groups.

The challenges allowed under HB 3 hearken back to the 2004 presidential election when partisan challengers in Ohio were allowed to question whether a person was an eligible voter or not. Civil rights and voter advocacy groups decried such tactics as last vestiges of voter intimidation laws such as Jim Crow. Many naturalized citizens fled nations where voting was difficult and citizens had to show documentation in order to participate in society. After the strides the U.S. has made this year with renewing the Voting Rights Act, it is disappointing that many U.S. citizens are no more free to cast their ballot than when they lived under abusive regimes in other nations.

Plaintiffs in the case include community organizations such as the Asian American Bar Association, the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Ohio and the Federation of India Community Associations. The suit also names nearly twenty individuals plaintiffs who represent naturalized U.S. citizens from around the state including community activists, doctors and lawyers. Cooperating attorneys with the ACLU of Ohio include Meredith Bell-Platts, Staff Attorney with the ACLU Voting Rights Project in Atlanta, Ben Blustein, Staff Attorney with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Subodh Chandra, a Cleveland area attorney and Daniel P. Tokaji, Professor at OSU Moritz College of Law, and the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.