Federal judges to rule on poll challenges
Ohio and Florida allow in-person challenges.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal judges in two states are expected to rule Monday on whether and how Republicans may challenge voters' qualifications at the polls in battleground Ohio.
Democrats say planned voter challenges in Ohio and Florida may target minority voters or cause chaos and long lines at voting stations.
In-person challenges are allowable in both those states, either of which could determine the presidency, but questions about the motivation and conduct of poll challengers has become an important 11th-hour legal issue in the campaign. Poll challenges also could figure in legal challenges after the election.
Republicans lost a federal court battle Friday to conduct voter challenges at special hearings ahead of the election Tuesday.
The question now is whether the party may approach voters individually at the polls to question their eligibility. At issue are thousands of names on the rolls in Ohio that the GOP calls suspect because political mail sent to the voters' listed addresses could not be delivered.
Three Ohio judges take up various aspects of the question Monday, one day before the election.
A judge in an unlikely quarter -- faraway New Jersey -- could also rule on whether the poll challenges contemplated in Ohio should be outlawed nationally.
Facing deadline
Lawyers worked over the weekend in that case, with a deadline today for filings with a federal judge in Newark. U.S. District Judge Dickinson Debevoise is considering a complaint from a 20-year-old Cleveland woman who says she may be among the voters singled out for challenges.
The woman, Ebony Malone, says through her lawyers that the voter challenges violate a 1982 consent decree in New Jersey in which the Republican National Committee agreed to refrain from "ballot security activities ... where racial or ethnic composition" was a factor. The RNC admitted no wrongdoing.