On May 4, U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence E. Kahn, of Albany, released a scheduling order in the lawsuit Schulz v Kelleher, 1:07-cv-943. There will be a jury trial starting September 20, 2010. The lawsuit, filed on September 12, 2007, argues that the Constitution protects a voter’s right to have his or her vote counted. The lawsuit also alleges that there is no satisfactory protection for this right unless all steps of the vote-counting process are done in public. It also alleges that, therefore, all ballots must be hand-marked and hand-counted in public. See the complaint here. The lawsuit only deals with New York voting procedures. The original complaint had voters from all states, and sued all states, but all states except New York were dismissed from the lawsuit in 2008. Therefore, the vast majority of plaintiffs and defendants are no longer in the case. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for this news.
Great Britain counts all its votes in public, on ballots marked by hand. There is a single place within each House of Commons district in which that district’s ballots are counted, and it is open to the public during the vote-counting process.
The lawsuit seeks to have ballots counted at each polling place. In the UK it is quite common to have several constituencies counted at the same location.
The UK has also conducted a number of experiments with electronic voting, including voting by internet.
It will be interesting to see what if any impact this case has on the DOJ’s NYS HAVA enforcement case.