The issue of whether Ohioans can vote on the three days before the Nov. 6 election may be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Judges from both a U.S. District Court and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals have upheld early voting those days in the past month, but Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted said Tuesday that he will appeal the latest ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“This is an unprecedented intrusion by the federal courts into how states run elections, and because of its impact on all 50 states as to who and how elections will be run in America, we are asking the Supreme Court to step in and allow Ohioans to run Ohio elections,” Husted said in a statement.

Ohioans were allowed to vote on the Saturday, Sunday and Monday before the election in 2008, and about 100,000 people did so. But a law passed by the Ohio legislature in 2011 set the end of early voting at 6 p.m. on the Friday prior to Election Day.

The Obama campaign challenged that law on constitutional grounds, leading to the flurry of legal rulings. In a statement, Obama campaign general counsel Bob Bauer said he expects Husted won’t win with the highest court in the land.

“There is no justification for the state’s arbitrary actions this year in trying to deny the vast majority of its voters access to open polling places for the last three days before the election,” Bauer said. “This has been the unanimous conclusion of the courts that have considered this case.”

Early voting began in Ohio last week, and more than 59,000 voters have already cast their ballots in person, according to the secretary of state’s office. The office mailed absentee ballot request forms to all active Ohio voters, new this year, and it has already received 1.1 million requests for applications to vote by mail.

A report by Northeast Ohio Voter Advocates estimated 97,000 Ohio voters would be negatively affected if not allowed to vote during the three days before Election Day. Of the 28,000 Montgomery County voters who cast early ballots in-person in 2008, nearly one-third did so on those three days.

Several studies, including an investigation by the Dayton Daily News, found that Democratic voters were much more likely than Republicans to vote early at local boards of elections offices in the 2008 presidential election, especially in urban counties.

Husted said the past month’s court rulings don’t make sense because they return Ohio to the same position it was in four years ago, when each county could set its own hours.

“That means that one county may close down voting for the final weekend while a neighboring county may remain open,” Husted said Tuesday. “How any court could consider this a remedy to an equal protection problem is stunning.”

Ellis Jacobs, an attorney with Advocates for Basic Legal Equality and a longtime Dayton voting rights activist, said the simplest solution would be for Husted to drop his appeal and issue a directive setting uniform voting hours for the final three days.

“I don’t know why he’s pretending like there’s some kind of danger of lack of uniformity when he has it within his power to address that issue, and he just did it in another case,” Jacobs said, pointing to Husted’s directive setting uniform weekday voting hours.

Husted did say if his appeal is unsuccessful, he would “consult with all 88 counties before crafting a directive to set uniform hours.”

Local Board of Election officials said they’ll be ready for the final weekend regardless of the eventual ruling.

“When Judge Economus made his first decision, I started putting planning in the works that yep, we’re going to be open (the last three days),” said Miami County BOE Director Steve Quillen. “I can float either way. … I’m ready.”

Butler County BOE Director Lynn Edward Kinkaid said his county is prepared, too, while acknowledging that final weekend voting is a challenge.

“Four years ago they worked us Saturday, Sunday and Monday and it was pretty hard on the staff,” Kinkaid said. “We’ll do whatever our bosses tell us to do. If we work those hours, it’s going to put a strain on us, but we know that.”

Kinkaid said Butler County spent $108,000 in overtime on the last presidential election, at a time when counties are struggling financially.

Quillen echoed Husted when he said that between mail voting, five weeks of in-person voting and Election Day voting, residents have plenty of opportunity.