CLEVELAND – A hail of writs descended on the state of Ohio yesterday as the two major political parties, government officials, citizen activists, and even news organizations used the courts to jockey for position in advance of today’s presidential election.

The legal skirmishing stretched late into the night after three federal judges and one state judge issued orders shutting down or significantly limiting Ohio’s process allowing registered challengers into polling places to object to the qualifications of persons seeking to vote. Just after midnight, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the federal orders from taking effect. Democrats still had option of seeking relief from the Supreme Court last night.

Also, earlier last night, a state court order limiting the number of challengers was overturned by the state Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision.

Leaders of the Republican Party here, warning of voter fraud, signed up 3,500 people to act as Election Day “challengers.” Democrats denounced the GOP plan, describing it as a thinly veiled attempt to intimidate blacks and members of other minority groups from going to the polls.

Ohio, along with Florida and Pennsylvania, is among the most hotly contested states in this year’s presidential campaign.

A prominent authority on election law, Richard Hasen, said the extent of the preemptive litigation in Ohio was unprecedented. He praised the courts for trying to resolve the disputes before Election Day, but expressed fear that they would run out of time to convey their rulings to election officials across the state.

“I’m all in favor of pre-election review, but this is a little close to the wire,” Mr. Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said.

The broadest order against the challengers came yesterday from a federal judge in Cincinnati, Susan Dlott. She prohibited appointed challengers from entering voting sites anywhere in the state.

“The sheer number of people present in and around the polling place, the unprecedented number of newly registered voters, and the presence of inexperienced challengers, lacking any significant training and limited by precinct workers who have never before had to deal with such a situation, creates an extraordinary and potentially disastrous risk of intimidation and delay,” Judge Dlott wrote.

The case before her was brought by two black civil-rights activists in Cincinnati. The judge noted their arguments that the challenges were likely to have a greater impact on blacks, but she issued her order without addressing whether the GOP’s actions were discriminatory.

A federal judge based in Akron, John Adams, also predicted chaos if the challengers were given access to the polls. Late Sunday, he issued a slightly narrower order, barring challengers from entering polling places “for the sole purpose of challenging the qualifications of other voters.”

In a strange-but-true twist, one of the judges who reined in the voter challenges in Ohio was sitting in New Jersey.

Judge Dickinson Debevoise, a senior judge on the federal District Court, ruled that the Republican Party’s plans to use a list of as many as 35,000 possibly unqualified voters violated a settlement in a decades-old case alleging that GOP operatives were intimidating blacks at the polls.

After a three-hour hearing in Newark yesterday afternoon, Judge Debevoise entered an order prohibiting the Republican National Committee and its agents from using the voter challenge list prepared by the Ohio Republican Party.

Lawyers for the GOP had argued that the Ohio party was not covered by the consent decree, but an attorney who sought the order on behalf of a black voter from Cincinnati said the judge rejected that argument.

“I really do think it’s a victory for democracy,” the Democratic lawyer, Craig Livingston, said. He called the Republicans seeking to place challengers at the polls “lawless thugs.”

An attorney representing the Republican Party, Bobby Burchfield, strongly disputed the Democrats’ claim that the GOP is trying to scare African-Americans into not voting.

“The notion that simply because the Republican National Committee is concerned about potential voter fraud and widespread voter irregularities, that that’s just a ruse to intimidate minority voters, that’s an outrageous allegation and it’s completely false,” he said.

Mr. Burchfield said numerous news reports indicated that Democratic leaning organizations had engaged in “massive voter fraud” by submitting fabricated voter registrations. The attorney said the national GOP had appealed Judge Debevoise’s order to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals and expected a ruling by morning.

Judge Adams was appointed last year by President Bush. Judge Dlott was appointed in 1995 by President Clinton. Judge Debevoise was appointed in 1979 by President Carter.

The state Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Ohio law allows one challenger from each political party for each precinct voting at a given place. The decision will have no effect on today’s election unless the federal court orders are overturned.

A lower state court had held that only one challenger a party was permitted at each polling site, regardless of the number of precincts.

In a separate case, the Associated Press and the major television news networks won a temporary restraining order late last night barring Ohio officials from interfering with press representatives conducting exit polls. Last week, Ohio’s secretary of state instructed local officials to arrest anyone, including exit poll takers, loitering within 100 feet of polling sites.

Lawyers for the state defended the measure as a reasonable effort to ensure that voters are able to enter and leave polling sites unimpeded.

In his ruling, Judge Michael Walton said he had heard no convincing explanation for why such surveys should be banned this year when they were permitted in previous elections. “Polling activities such as these have been conducted in this manner for over two decades.

There is no evidence before the Court that these activities have ever impinged on a citizen’s right to vote,” the judge wrote.