Husted: No voter purge before Nov. 6
Ohio Democratic Party chairman welcomes directive.
Despite winning COLUMBUS — a narrowvictory before theU.S. Supreme Court, the office of Secretary of State Jon Husted is instructing county boards of elections to not purge hundreds of thousands of Ohioans from voting rolls prior to the Nov. 6 election.
Ohioans whose registrations could otherwise be cancelled for failing to vote during a six-year span and failing to respond to notices will remain eligible to vote this year, Husted’s office said in amemorandum Tuesday.
Federal law prohibits revoking voter registrations less than 90 days prior to a federal election, Husted’s office said.
Ohio voters had not been removed for failing to cast ballots since the lawsuit that led to theU.S. SupremeCourt ruling on Monday was filed in 2016.
Prior to then, 225,717 voters were notified in 2014 of their potential purging this year and 363,882 were notified in 2013 they could lose their vote in 2017. Franklin County’s cumulative total of voters who could have been purged stands at about 40,000, a spokesman said. Husted’s office said it has no current numbers on voters who could potentially have been purged.
Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepperwelcomed Husted’s directive. “It’s good to see the federal law protecting Ohio voters for the rest of 2018 even when current state leaders have beenworking overtime to knock them off the rolls,” he said. “There are far better ways to keep the rolls clean than the current inefficient and sloppy approach.”
In a 5-4 ruling handed down Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an Ohio law that allows election officials to remove voters fromthe rolls if they have neither voted during a sixyear span nor responded to notices mailed by elections boards.
The justices overruled a 2016 decision by a threejudge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court ofAppeals that the Ohio systemviolated federal law in a way that critics charged works against minority and low-income voters.
Husted and Republican supporters of the law said the purging helps maintain valid rolls of registered voterswhile heading off potential abuse or fraud. Democrats said the “use it or lose it” approach to voting serves to disenfranchise infrequent voters.
In theNov. 6 election, voters will cast ballots for all statewide executive offices, including the governor’s race between the Republican ticket of Mike DeWine and Husted and the Democratic team of Richard Cordray and Betty Sutton.