By John Seewer
The Associated Press

TOLEDO—A federal judge ruled today that Ohio voters can cast ballots Nov. 2 at the wrong polling place as long as they are in the county where they are registered.

Voters who show up at the wrong polling place after moving without notifying the elections board or those whose names can't be found on the registration rolls should be able to cast provisional ballots there, U.S. District Court Judge James Carr said.

The judge said Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell can't enforce an earlier directive to elections boards requiring poll workers to send voters at the wrong polling place to their correct precinct.

Carr's preliminary injunction orders Blackwell to submit a new directive by Monday that complies with federal Help America Vote Act.

Denying any voter the right to a provisional vote will erode confidence in the election and the incentive to vote, the judge said.

"Lessened participation at the polls diminishes the vitality of our democracy," Carr said.

The decision is a victory for the Ohio Democratic Party and a coalition of labor and voter rights group, which said Blackwell's order discriminates against the poor and minorities.

The state's Democrats, who sued Blackwell, said his directive would hurt their candidates more than it would Republicans because poor people tend to vote for Democrats and move more often.

A message seeking comment was left for Blackwell, and the Democratic Party said it would have a statement later today.

The lawsuit said federal law, which Congress passed in 2002, allows voters to cast provisional ballots at any polling place in their home county.

Blackwell, a Republican, maintained that the law yields the rules governing provisional voting to each state and Ohio law requires voters to cast ballots at the correct polling place.

He sent county boards of elections an order on Sept. 16 telling them to deny provisional ballots to voters who show up at the wrong polling place.

Ohio law states that no one shall "vote or attempt to vote in any primary, special, or general election in a precinct in which that person is not a legally qualified elector."

Not all boards planned to follow the order.

Cuyahoga County's board of elections said it would accept such votes.

Board Chairman Bob Bennett, who also heads the Ohio Republican Party, said the board would not count votes cast in violation of Ohio law, but that it did not want to deny ballots to any voters who want them to avoid confrontation at the ballot box

Provisional ballots are not counted until after the election.

They are set aside and inspected by Democratic and Republican board employees to ensure they are valid. More than 100,000 provisional votes were cast in the 2000 election - or about 2 percent of the total vote in the presidential election in which President Bush defeated Democrat Al Gore by 3.6 percentage points in Ohio.