Woot!

The Federal Appeals court of the 6^th circuit has ruled that Ohio must provide early voting in the last days before the election:

President Barack Obama’s campaign won a federal appeals court ruling that requires every citizen in Ohio be offered the same number of early voting days as members of the U.S. military.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati today rejected a bid by Ohio’s secretary of state and attorney general, both Republicans, to overturn a lower-court order that blocked a law ending pre-election voting three days earlier for civilians than for service-members and overseas citizens.

“There is no relevant distinction between the two groups,” the three-judge panel said. “The state argues that military voters need extra early voting time because they could be suddenly deployed. But any voter could be suddenly called away and prevented from voting on Election Day.”

Ohio controls 18 of the 270 Electoral College votes Obama or his challenger, Mitt Romney, needs to win the presidency and no Republican has won the office without carrying the state. Obama took Ohio with 51.5 percent of the vote in 2008 when more than 100,000 people, out of a total of 5.77 million, cast ballots in the last three days, according to today’s opinion.

Theoretically, it seems to me that the 'Phants could shut down the early voting if they were to strip early voting rights from active duty servicemen, but I'm inclined to believe that the the political repercussions of doing this would be too much for them to try this.