COVID-Related Election Litigation Tracker

Case Details

This database consolidates and tracks litigation concerning the effect of the pandemic on election law. The purpose of this tool is to provide an interactive list of relevant cases that can be searched by issue, court, status, and jurisdiction.

Case Details

 

League of Women Voters of Ohio v. LaRose II

Closed

League of Women Voters of Ohio v. LaRose, No. 2:20-cv-03843 (S.D. Ohio)

  Case Summary Signature matching procedures and standards are inconsistent across different counties in Ohio. The State also fails to provide sufficient opportunity for voters to correct any signature mismatches. The voters most susceptible to signature mismatches are the elderly, disabled, ill and non-native English signatories and these populations consequently have an especially high risk of disenfranchisement due to the signature matching requirement. Plaintiffs brought suit seeking an injunction requiring the state to cease all signature matching of absentee ballot applications until uniform standards have been implemented in the state and processes are in place for voters to be given adequate opportunity to cure rejection of their absentee ballots due to signature mismatches. Plaintiffs also request that the current signature matching procedure in Ohio be found unconstitutional.
Filed 07/31/2020
State Ohio
Type of Court Federal
Circuit Sixth Circuit
Status Closed
Last Updated 03/11/2021
Issue Tag(s) Vote-by-Mail (Notice/Cure for Mismatches Missing Signature or Mistakes)
Complaint(s) 07/31/2020: Complaint filed.
Dispositive Ruling(s) 09/27/2020: Order/Ruling, The court concluded that Ohio’s signature mismatch cure period places a moderate burden on voters. The court applied Anderson-Burdick sliding scrutiny and held that the state’s interest in preventing fraud outweighs the burden on the right to vote. Accordingly, the court denied plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction.
Creative Commons License  Covid-Related Election Litigation Tracker by the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project – Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.