The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a request from Ohio Democrats to restore the state’s so-called “Golden Week” – a seven-day period where people can both register to vote and cast a ballot.
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Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted (HYOO’-sted) said in a Tuesday statement that it’s time for “these wasteful lawsuits to end”.
An appeals court last month reversed that decision, observing that OH, even without the benefit of extra days of early voting and same-day registration, was a “national leader” in providing additional opportunities to vote early.
The Supreme Court’s brief order did not note any dissenting votes on the eight-member court, which is evenly divided between liberals and conservatives.
The state’s Democratic Party had asked the high court to suspend a ruling that allowed for the cut while Democrats and other plaintiffs appealed the issue. “This much is perfectly clear: OH is a place where it is easy to vote and hard to cheat”.
The law was one of numerous passed in recent years in Republican-governed states that Democrats and civil rights activists have said were meant to make it more hard for voters including African-Americans, Hispanics and others who tend to back Democratic candidates to cast ballots.
Golden Week was introduced in a bid to make it easier for people to vote in OH after lengthy lines at polling locations marred the 2004 election.
A lower court decision from last month upheld a law eliminating days in which people could register and vote at the same time, a period known as golden week.
While the court can’t predict how African-Americans will turn out in future elections, he said, “It is reasonable to conclude from this evidence that their right to vote will be modestly burdened” by the law. In 2008, 60,000 people voted during the Golden Week period in OH and 80,000 did so in 2012.
Groups led by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union sued and eventually reached a settlement.
The Supreme Court denied the Democrats’ request to put that decision on hold while they appealed.
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Elias, who also serves as general counsel for the Clinton campaign, argued, “Tens of thousands of OH voters have relied on Golden Week during the past two presidential elections, and African-Americans have done so at far higher rather than other voters”. In North Carolina and MI, however, appeals courts had struck down state voting restrictions as discriminatory against minority voters.
