Federal Law Itself Says Ohio’s Law Is Illegal. Conservatives on the Supreme Court Disagreed.
The U.S. Supreme Court basically just signaled to conservative states it’s OK to purge low income and minority voters from their rolls. In a 5-4 decision authored by Justice Samuel Alito, the Court ruled that in an Ohio case removing infrequent voters from the rolls was not a violation of federal law.
Ohio has purged more voters, and more low income and minority voters, than any state in the nation. Ohio is a major swing state that has chosen the winner of the presidential race in every election since 1960.
“In the heavily African-American neighborhoods near downtown, more than 10 percent of registered voters have been removed due to inactivity since 2012,” a 2016 Reuters article on Ohio’s voting law reported. “In suburban Indian Hill, only 4 percent have been purged due to inactivity.”
“The process at issue is triggered by not voting during a two-year period. Registration is canceled if the voter does not cast a ballot during the next four years or update his or her address. Repeated notices are sent to voters whose registration has been flagged.”
8 out of 10 registered voters ignore the postcards, many thinking they are junk mail. The postcards are only in English, leaving those who don’t speak English at a disadvantage.
Slate’s legal writer Mark Joseph Stern issues a strong warning on what this means:
And citing the law in question itself, Stern writes that Justice Alito’s decision “warp[s] the plain meaning of the Motor Voter Act to allow precisely the kind of voter purge procedure it was passed to forbid. The law expressly *prohibits* a ‘use it or lose it’-type law to punish infrequent voters.”
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