On April 20, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to grant a stay in the Hamilton County, Ohio election lawsuit over provisional ballots from the November 2, 2010 election. See this order. This means the two candidates for Juvenile County Judge, a Republican and a Democrat, will finally be able to learn who won the election. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.
Hamilton County Board of Elections didn’t want to count provisional ballots for certain voters who turned in the ballots to the wrong precinct location on election day, even though the voters were in the right building. There was confusion because there were two precincts voting in the same building. The voters were not at fault, because polling place officials gave them misinformation. Nevertheless, Ohio election law says provisional ballots are invalid if they are not turned in at the right precinct. But the U.S. District Court, and the 6th circuit, said they should be counted anyway, because Hamilton County had counted a different set of provisional ballots that had not been turned in at the correct precinct. The lower courts cited Bush v Gore, which said “Having once granted the right to vote on equal terms, the state may not, by later arbitrary and disparate treatment, value one person’s vote over that of another.”
One more case for having NO *provisional* ballots — one more scheme by the usual suspects to do what usual suspects love to do — cause chaos.
How many things do New Age poll workers have to worry about on election days ???
Screwup and get sued for $$$ billions in damages ??? — since the right to vote is involved.
The New Age brain dead SCOTUS MORONS can NOT tell the difference between intentional and UN-intentional (i.e negligent) violations of the CONSTITUTION — in ANY area of the LAW.
MORE drastic results (civil/criminal) for intentional violations.
LESS drastic results (civil/criminal) for UN-intentional violations.
Intention stuff is a FACT question — did Officer X intentionally or UN-intentionally do [or NOT do] such and such at time T and place P ???
i.e. stuff for juries in disputed fact cases.
How does the Constitution barely manage to survive from day to day with the SCOTUS party hack MORONS putting out lots of JUNK opinions every year — especially election law JUNK opinions ???
See the EVIL INSANE Snowden v. Hughes, 321 U.S. 1 (1944) — in the DARK AGE of Election law — before Baker v. Carr in 1962.
The Hamilton Bd tried to bring up Snowden as a defense for the MORON poll workers involved.
See the tons of paperwork at —
http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/litigation/Hunter.php