Supreme loss for vote rights

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court made it easier Monday for states to remove occasional voters from the rolls, upholding an Ohio law that drops voters who fail to cast a ballot and do not respond to several notices. In a 5-to-4 decision, the court’s conservative majority agreed with Ohio Republicans who said they sought to “clean up” the voting rolls by purging the names of people who appeared to have moved and left the area.

The court said that nationwide, 24 million voter registrations are estimated to be inaccurate or invalid, mostly of people who have moved.

The dissenting justices said the ruling would allow officials to wrongly eliminate voter registrations of people who sat out an election or two and did not respond to notices in the mail.

Liberal activists said they feared Ohio’s model will now be used in other Republicanleaning states.