Ohio voters should not have a "golden week" in which they can both register to vote and cast a ballot, a federal appeals court declared today. "Proper deference to state legislative authority requires that Ohio's election process be allowed to proceed unhindered by the federal courts," said a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that split 2-1.

Golden Week is gone again in Ohio.



For the time being, at least.



The controversial period in which Ohioans can both register to vote and cast an early ballot was struck down Tuesday by a federal appellate pane, overturning a lower-court ruling re-establishing Golden Week.



"Proper deference to state legislative authority requires that Ohio�s election process be allowed to proceed unhindered by the federal courts," said a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that split 2-1.



Thus continues the ritual witnessed every presidential election year in bellwether Ohio: Bitter court battles over voting.



Now Ohio Democrats who brought the lawsuit must decide whether to ask the full appeals court to consider Tuesday's decision.



That's the most likely route to reversing the ruling, said nationally known elections exper Rick Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California at Irvine.



While the party could now appeal directly to the short-handed U.S. Supreme Court, Hasen said with the justices split ideologically 4-4, "it is hard to imagine any of the conservative judges agreeing with the Democrats." A tie means the appeals court ruling stands.



The party is still considering its next move. Chairman David Pepper called Golden Week "a popular and cherished feature of our elections for a decade and has allowed tens of thousands of Ohioans to safely and conveniently cast a ballot."



The GOP-dominated legislature and Gov. John Kasich nixed Golden Week in February 2014. Democratic Party organizations of Ohio, Cuyahoga County and Montgomery County sued Secretary of State Jon Husted and Attorney General Mike DeWine, both Republicans.



�I am pleased the court agreed that Ohio�s voting period, among the most generous offered in all the states in the nation, is nondiscriminatory,� DeWine said.



Husted said, �Ohio offers a generous number of days, hours and ways to vote � making us one of the easiest states in which to cast a ballot. This issue has been dragged through the courts by political activists twice over the course of several years, and both times, it has ended with the same result: Ohio�s laws are fair and constitutional.



�I hope the Democrats will end their wasteful lawsuits so we can all move forward with this election.�



In May, Judge Michael H. Watson of U.S. District Court in Columbus ruled the 2014 law violated both the U.S. Constitution and federal Voting Rights Act, primarily because it disproportionately affected African Americans.



But the two majority members of the appellate panel said the elimination of Golden Week "results, at most, in a minimal disparate burden on some African Americans� right to vote."



The duo, David W. McKeague and Richard Allen Griffin, was appointed by GOP President George W. Bush (as was Watson). The disstenter, Judge Jane Branstetter Stranch, was placed on the bench by Democratic President Barack Obama.



The majority slammed Democrats' reasoning.



"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. Adopting (the Democrats') theory of disenfranchisement would create a 'one-way ratchet' that would discourage states from ever increasing early voting opportunities, lest they be prohibited by federal courts from later modifying their election procedures in response to changing circumstances."



Stranch wrote in her dissent, "I do not think that it is federal intrusion or micromanaging to evaluate election procedures to determine if discrimination lurks in an obvious rule or in a subtle detail."



She called the majority's assertions about the ease of voting in Ohio "problematic" because after Watson analyzed the evidence and heard from a host of witnesses during a 10-day trial, his finding "that Ohio law imposes some burden on the right of African Americans to vote in Ohio indicates that how 'easy' it is to vote under Ohio�s new regime bears some small but definable relationship to the color of your skin."

drowland@dispatch.com



@darreldrowland