Judicial Watch Statement on Ohio Court’s Ruling in Early Voting Case

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton today made the following statement in response to the ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversing a district court decision and upholding an Ohio law that shortens the state’s absentee voting period from 35 to 29 days (Ohio Democratic Party v. Husted (No. 16-3561)):

“It is rewarding that the appeals court took the position advocated by Judicial Watch and the Allied Educational Foundation (AEF). Early voting is a bad public policy that unduly burdens the taxpayers, increases the likelihood of fraud, and confuses voters,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “It was absurd and dishonest to suggest that racism was behind the sensible reform of cutting back early voting from an excessive 35 days before Election Day. The Left’s attack on election integrity, in partnership with the Obama Justice Department, doesn’t bode well for a clean November election.”

In its opinion the court wrote:

[P]laintiffs complain that allowance of 29 days of early voting does not suffice under federal law. They insist that Ohio’s prior accommodation—35 days of early voting, which also created a six-day “Golden Week” opportunity for same-day registration and voting—established a federal floor that Ohio may add to but never subtract from. This is an astonishing proposition. Nearly a third of the states offer no early voting.…The issue is not whether some voter somewhere would benefit from six additional days of early voting or from the opportunity to register and vote at the same time. Rather, the issue is whether the challenged law results in a cognizable injury under the Constitution or the Voting Rights Act. We conclude that it does not.

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