Two Big Legal Wins For Ohio GOP

The Supreme Court refused to intervene in a last-minute court fight Tuesday over whether Republicans may challenge the qualifications of voters in largely minority areas of battleground Ohio.

Justice David Souter denied a request from a black voter in Cleveland, who argued that the GOP challenges were unfair to minorities. Souter said Ebony Malone's request was essentially moot because she has since successfully voted without facing a Republican challenge.

In the decision leading to Souter's ruling, a federal appeals court earlier Tuesday had allowed the GOP to mount challenges at the polls to people on a list of 23,000 potentially suspect Ohio voters. The ruling reversed a lower court order that had been in effect for most of Tuesday while thousands of Ohio voters cast ballots.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not explain its reasoning.

The emergency request to the Supreme Court was the second such appeal to reach the high court from Ohio on Election Day.

In the early morning hours, Justice John Paul Stevens refused a separate appeal to stop Republican challenges at Ohio polling places.

Republicans said they wanted challengers in precincts because of concerns that voters might be registered fraudulently. The GOP pointed to thousands of pieces of political mail sent to newly registered voters that was returned as undeliverable.

But Democrats filed lawsuits accusing the GOP of trying to suppress turnout and intimidate black voters.

The issue played out over several days before the election, and in several courts in Ohio and elsewhere. Before the latest ruling from the 3rd Circuit, the patchwork of legal rulings meant that Republican challengers could observe voting in potential trouble spots and question some but not all voters.

Both Republicans and Democrats posted challengers at Ohio polling stations, but there were few reports of problems.

"Things seem to be going smoothly," Democratic party spokesman Myron Marlin said.

Court skirmishing over the Ohio challenges reflected the state's status as a potential must-win for either President Bush or Democrat John Kerry.

Hundreds of thousands of new voters have signed up in Ohio this year.

Ohio was the scene of other pre-election legal challenges over provisional ballots and other issues and could produce new court fights after the election.

In a separate ruling Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that Ohio voters who did not receive absentee ballots on time could cast provisional ballots at the polls. Provisional ballots are essentially backup ballots given to voters who find they are not listed on the rolls. It was unclear how many voters were affected by the ruling, which reverses an earlier directive by Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell.

About 90 percent of the 3,500 monitors registered by Republicans showed up to work the polling places, said Mark Weaver, a lawyer for the Ohio Republican Party. Democrats say they have thousands of challengers but will not give a specific number.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson compared Republican attempts to challenge voter registrations in Ohio to intimidation tactics that whites used to disenfranchise blacks in the South decades ago.

"The whole idea of Republicans spending time trying to import challengers into the black community is Old South politics, a type of intimidation," the Democrat said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

"Mr. Jackson has his facts wrong," Weaver said. "The voters of Ohio neither need nor want Jesse Jackson's political circus injected into the election process."