The Supreme Court
5-4 ruling makes it easier for states to cut back on rolls
makes it easier 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 notices.
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 5-4 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 four liberal justices dissented and said the ruling would allow officials to wrongly eliminate the voter registrations of people who sat out an election or two and did not respond to notices in the mail.
The legal dispute played out against a backdrop where two major parties had opposite views. Republicans spoke of “voter fraud” and election rolls they said were stocked with ineligible and illegal voters, while Democrats complained of “voter suppression” by GOP states which, they said, made it harder for minorities and the poor to cast ballots.
Ohio has gone further than other states in trying to cut back its voter rolls, and liberal activists said they feared its model will now be used in other Republican-leaning states.
“Voters should not be purged from the rolls simply because they have exercised their right not to vote. This ruling is a setback for voting rights, but it is not a green light to engage in wholesale purges of eligible voters without notice,” said Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project.
Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, called the ruling a “disappointing decision, not only because it gets the law wrong, but also because it sends the wrong message to state officials. They must do everything possible to help people vote, not place obstacles in their paths.”
Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted called the decision “a victory for election integrity, and a defeat for those who use the federal court system to make election law across the country. This decision is validation of Ohio’s efforts to clean up the voter rolls and now with the blessing nation’s highest court, it can serve as a model for other states to use.”
Most states remove voters from the rolls only after seeing evidence they have moved or died.
Lawyers for California, New York and Illinois told the court that election officials would remove a voter from the rolls if the Postal Service returned a notice as “undeliverable” or moved with no forwarding address. They may also consult tax records or the Department of Motor Vehicles to see if a resident has moved.
Civil rights lawyers had sued Ohio and argued that tens of thousands of voters in Cleveland and other big cities had been wrongly removed from voting rolls. They won an appeals court ruling that held the state was violating federal law by removing voters simply for a “failure to vote.”
At issue was how to interpret two federal laws that set conflicting goals:
The National Voter Registration Act of 1993, often called the Motor Voter Act, sought to “increase the number of eligible voters who register to vote” and protect the “integrity of the electoral process” by maintaining “accurate and current voter registration rolls.” The Help America Vote Act of 2002 said states should make a “reasonable effort to remove registrants who are ineligible to vote” by dropping those who skipped elections and did not respond to notices. However, the law also said registered voters should not be “removed solely by a reason of a failure to vote.”
Not surprisingly, judges disagreed on how to read those legal requirements.