PRESS RELEASE from Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, October 9, 2012


COLUMBUS – Secretary of State Jon Husted today announced that he will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to make the final determination on whether the General Assembly of the State of Ohio or the federal courts should set Ohio election laws. Husted will be appealing the Friday decision by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Obama v. Husted. Regarding this decision, all of the following may be attributed to Secretary Husted:

“This is an unprecedented intrusion by the federal courts into how states run elections and because of its impact on all 50 states as to who and how elections will be run in America we are asking the Supreme Court to step in and allow Ohioans to run Ohio elections.

“This ruling not only doesn’t make legal sense, it doesn’t make practical sense. The court is saying that all voters must be treated the same way under Ohio law, but also grants Ohio’s 88 elections boards the authority to establish 88 different sets of rules. That means that one county may close down voting for the final weekend while a neighboring county may remain open. How any court could consider this a remedy to an equal protection problem is stunning.

“As a swing state, we in Ohio expect to be held to a high standard and level of scrutiny when it comes to elections. However, it’s troubling that the federal courts have failed to recognize that there isn’t another state in the union which can claim Ohio’s broad menu of voting options and opportunity to vote. In Ohio, ALL voters already have at least 230 hours available to vote in person prior to Election Day, ALL registered voters received an application to vote by mail and ALL voters still have the ability to vote during the 13-hour window on Election Day itself.

“While I will be asking the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold Ohio law through the appeals process, the last thing I want to see is a non-uniform system where voters will be treated differently in all 88 counties.

“Since some boards of elections have already started to take action on hours of operation for the three days before Election Day, I am going to take time to consult with all 88 counties before crafting a directive to set uniform hours should the state not be successful upon appeal.”


For more information, please contact Matt McClellan
For Immediate Release: Tuesday, October 9, 2012 
Contact: Obama for America Press
 
 
CHICAGO – Obama for America released the following statement from General Counsel Bob Bauer in reaction to the Ohio Secretary of State seeking an appeal of the 6th Circuit Court decision:
 
"There is no justification for the state’s arbitrary actions this year in trying to deny the vast majority of its voters access to open polling places for the last three days before the election. This has been the unanimous conclusion of the courts that have considered this case.
 
"The Secretary of State has now chosen to extend the litigation and to ask the United States Supreme Court to intervene just four weeks before the election.  We have no reason to believe that he will meet with any more success now than before. 
 
"It is a shame that the Secretary would not have committed his office's energy instead to implementing the outstanding court orders and administering the orderly and effective early voting process that has served Ohio voters so well since 2005."
 
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