"What is Voting Intimidation?"
Josh Levin writes on Slate.com: In response to a lawsuit by Sen. Tom Daschle, a U.S. District Judge ruled this morning that Republican poll watchers in South Dakota were intimidating Native American voters by following them out of polling places and taking down their license plate numbers. But in another decision today, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that GOP poll watchers weren't intimidating Ohio voters by checking their names against a list of registered voters. So, what exactly do the courts consider voter intimidation?
Courts consistently rule that physical violence or threats constitute voter intimidation, but, as today's conflicting rulings show, there is no judicial consensus on which nonviolent acts are legally considered intimidating. State and federal laws that ban intimidation don't offer much guidance on how courts should define it. The Ohio law, for instance, says that "no person shall … attempt by intimidation, coercion, or other unlawful means" to keep someone from voting. The most significant federal law banning intimidation is the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which states in Section 11(b) that "No person ... shall intimidate, threaten, or coerce ... any person for voting or attempting to vote." -- What Is Voter Intimidation? - Is it one thing in Ohio and another in South Dakota? By Josh Levin