[The Supreme] Court has unequivocally held that there is no constitutional right to absentee voting and that laws offering absentee ballots to some voters but not others are subject to rational-basis review unless the law "absolutely prohibited" voters "from exercising the franchise" ... It cannot seriously be argued that any voter—let alone an entire class of voters—has been disenfranchised when Ohio still offers [non-overseas] voters 230 hours of in-person absentee voting, more than 750 hours of absentee voting by mail, and 13 hours of voting on Election Day. The Sixth Circuit's ruling that lower income and lesser educated voters would not be able to vote at all other than through in-person absentee voting on these three particular days finds no support in fact or law.

The Sixth Circuit's ruling was handed down last week following an appeal [JURIST report] filed in September. Earlier that month the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio [official website] issued a preliminary [JURIST report] injunction preventing Ohio from enforcing the early voting limitation. Voting rights [JURIST backgrounder] have become especially contentious in the run up to the November presidential election. Also last month a judge for the US District Court for the Middle District of Florida [official website] ruled [JURIST report] that Florida does not have to provide 96 hours of early voting for the November elections.