A federal appeals court panel ruled Friday that Ohio counties can keep polls open for in-person early voting the three days before the election, delivering a win to the Obama campaign after months of legal wrangling over the battleground state’s election rules.
The campaign had gone to court to challenge a state law that for most voters would have ended early voting the final weekend before the election, one of a slew of restrictions instituted by the GOP-dominated Ohio legislature last year in what critics said was an effort to tamp down turnout by the minority voters who typically make greater use of early voting.
With the ruling, almost all of those restrictions have now been reversed, either by the courts or by the legislature itself, which repealed many of the restrictions after opponents gathered enough signatures to put them to a referendum. The rules in place in Ohio will now be largely the same as those in 2008.
http://www.boston.com/politicalinte...re-election/WJjV03Zzq9uvZp3RJH75iK/story.html
The campaign had gone to court to challenge a state law that for most voters would have ended early voting the final weekend before the election, one of a slew of restrictions instituted by the GOP-dominated Ohio legislature last year in what critics said was an effort to tamp down turnout by the minority voters who typically make greater use of early voting.
With the ruling, almost all of those restrictions have now been reversed, either by the courts or by the legislature itself, which repealed many of the restrictions after opponents gathered enough signatures to put them to a referendum. The rules in place in Ohio will now be largely the same as those in 2008.
http://www.boston.com/politicalinte...re-election/WJjV03Zzq9uvZp3RJH75iK/story.html