Voter registration lawsuits could shape election
CHICAGO — In a furious, multi-state campaign raging far from television cameras and cable TV chatter, scores of lawyers are arguing over the voting rights of perhaps millions of Americans who plan to cast ballots in the presidential election.
This is the courtroom campaign beneath the presidential campaign, fought in politically strategic states like Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, New York and others. The outcome of battles over voter registration, absentee ballots and the integrity of state voting lists could prove to be decisive in states where the margin of victory is expected to be slim.
"Voter registration is likely to be the issue of the 2008 election season," said Daniel Tokaji, an election law specialist at Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.
The legal battles come as millions of previously uninterested Americans, most of them Democrats energized by the primary contest between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, have registered to vote. With Democrats emboldened by large gains in voter registration and Republicans relying on an effective get-out-the-vote machine, the election could turn on pre-election arguments over who is allowed to vote.
Some of the current clashes are partisan, but many of them involve politically unaffiliated groups that have long been active in voting rights debates — the American Civil Liberties Union, the League of Women Voters, and the Brennan Center for Justice.
Disputes over a federal law intended to create a statewide voter registration database are being heard in courtrooms in several states, including Alabama. "Election law has become political strategy," said Richard Hasen, a professor specializing in election law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
