Hamilton County,Ohio Juvenile Court Judge Dispute

"Lawyers on both sides of the disputed election for Hamilton County, Ohio Juvenile Court judge took their case to one of the highest courts in the nation Thursday.," the Cincinnati Enquirer, this morning said. "Their arguments boiled down to a single question: How imperfect can an election be before it violates the U.S. Constitution?"

"On one side, lawyers for the county and Republican John Williams said election results should not be held up indefinitely by investigations into every potential error made at polling places," the article says. "'Mistakes happen. Elections aren't perfect,' said Dave Stevenson, the attorney for the county's board of elections. 'Mistakes just don't rise to a constitutional level.' On the other side, lawyers for Democrat Tracie Hunter, who trails Williams by 23 votes, said the government must investigate any mistake that could disenfranchise voters through no fault of their own."

The court action, which began last November over the counting of some 850 provisional ballots from Hamilton County's attempted juvenile court judge election, may, in fact, now stand a chance of heading all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, according to some.

Filed pretty much concurrently in the Ohio Supreme Court and Ohio's federal Southern District, the case, as the Enquirer phrased it Tuesday morning, now has the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals entering uncharted territory with implications that go beyond a single judgeship in Hamilton County. "The facts of this case are complex," the appeals judges wrote. "The appeals present questions of law regarding the interplay of federal and state law." ( Here )

Ohio State University's Election Law @ Moritz, in its Jan. 14 post, noted that while the issue is "not a high profile race, it could create a high profile precedent…. (appearing) to have the potential of forcing the U.S. Supreme Court itself, or at least one of its Justices (indeed, its newest member, Justice Elena Kagan), to weigh in on how the precedent of Bush v. Gore applies to other elections besides the one in which it arose (which was, of course, the 2000 presidential election)."