U.S. Judges to Hear Suit on Delaying Election
Three federal judges will consider arguments Thursday that they should postpone the Oct. 7 recall election because six California counties, including Los Angeles, will be using punch-card voting machines that officials concede are error-prone.
The suit, which has echoes of the 2000 presidential election, appears to be the last major legal challenge that could halt the election in which Gov. Gray Davis' future is at stake and 135 California residents are on the ballot to replace him.
Three civil rights organizations are asking the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to block the election for up to five months. The six counties, which represent 44% of state voters in the 2000 election, face a court-ordered March 1 deadline to replace their punch-card machines with newer, more accurate equipment.
Those are the same kinds of machines -- infamous for their "hanging chads" -- that created problems in Florida in the last presidential election. Flawed ballots there generated a six-week legal battle that culminated in a U.S. Supreme Court decision, Bush vs. Gore, halting a statewide recount.
In that case, the Supreme Court said a lack of uniform standards among Florida's counties created the possibility that ballots in certain parts of the state would have a greater likelihood of being counted, violating the Constitution's equal protection clause.
"Having once granted the right to vote on equal terms, the state may not, by later arbitrary or disparate treatment, value one person's vote over that of another," the Supreme Court majority said.
The plaintiffs in the current case -- the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project -- raise a similar argument, saying that the use of error-plagued punch-card machines in some counties but not others means voters in different counties will not be treated equally.
Legal analysts, including law professors Daniel Lowenstein of UCLA Law School and Leslie Jacobs of McGeorge Law School, say the plaintiffs face an uphill battle, pointing out that courts rarely delay elections.
In order to obtain a preliminary injunction, plaintiffs must show that they are likely to prevail in the case and that they will be irreparably harmed unless the court acts in their favor.
