Illinois Election Day Voter Registration Battle Continues
On September 27, 2016, a federal
district court judge issued a ruling in Harlan,
et al. v. Scholz, et al., blocking counties from implementing election day registration. Just this week (October 4, 2016), an appellate court issued a "stay" of that ruling, pending further proceedings.
SB 172, signed into law by
then-Governor Quinn, provided that certain Illinois counties (i.e., counties with a population of 100,000 or
more and counties with electronic polling books) must provide voters with the
option of registering to vote at any polling place on election day. Counties
with a population of less than 100,000 that do not have electronic polling
books were exempt from the new mandate.
Plaintiffs filed a lawsuit to challenge the law and alleged that their
interests were to “protect the rights of United States citizens in the
low-population counties without electronic polling books to ensure that they
have the same opportunity to vote as voters in high-population counties.” Plaintiffs asked the court to block
implementation of the election day registration.
The federal district court ruled in favor
of the plaintiffs, holding that they satisfied the requirements for a
preliminary injunction against implementation of the law. The court found irreparable harm to the
voters if, among other things, their right to vote and register to vote in
smaller counties was not the same as those with higher populations and
electronic polling books. The court also
accepted plaintiffs’ argument that the availability of polling place
registration would increase voter turn-out in high-population counties as
compared to the counties that were not covered under the law. The court rejected the defendants’ argument that geographical classifications are necessary for the
implementation of the election day registration system. When balancing the harms to the parties, the
court found that plaintiffs would be harmed by the unfair advantage given to
more populous counties over less populous ones.
Since the district court's ruling was issued, the Illinois
Attorney General filed an appeal, and the appellate
court stayed the district court’s ruling, meaning that at least for now, election day registration is not blocked, pending further proceedings. We will update
this blog as the same-day registration battles rages on.
Post Authored by Tiffany Nelson-Jaworski, Ancel Glink
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