Stewart v. Blackwell, United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Judge David D. Dowd, December 14, 2004 [ruling that the punch-card voting system used in Ohio does not discriminate against voters using it]. Excerpt:

The primary thrust of this litigation is an attempt to federalize elections by judicial rule or fiat via the invitation to this Court to declare a certain voting technology unconstitutional and then fashion a remedy.

This Court declines the invitation. Voting has been on a continuum in this country over two centuries. First, only white males enjoyed the privilege. Then, suffrage was extended to non-whites, but only after a bitter Civil War. Women did not obtain the right to vote until after the conclusion of World War I. It was not until the aftermath of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 that African-Americans had a realistic opportunity to vote in certain areas in the country.

Voting has gone from oral votes, to paper ballots, to lever machines and now, in the era of computers, to the use of computer technology. The determination of the applicable voting process has always been focused in the legislative branch of the government. See Weber v. Shelley, 347 F.3d 1105-07. In the Court's view, subject to constitutional amendment, that is where the determination should remain.

Turning now to the issues at hand, the Court finds that the plaintiffs have failed to make a case for judicial intervention with respect to the challenged voting technologies in this case, i.e., the punch card voting technology in use in Hamilton, Montgomery and Summit Counties and the central-count optical scan technique in use in Sandusky County.

While it is true that the percentage of residual or nonvoted ballots in the 2000 presidential election ran slightly higher in counties using punch card technology, that fact standing alone is insufficient to declare the use of the system unconstitutional.21 Moreover, the highest frequency in Ohio of residual voting bears a direct relationship to economic and educational factors, negating the Voting Rights Act claim against the three counties Hamilton, Montgomery, and Summit.

Read the full text of the opinion here. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.