Election integrity wins with high court’s ruling

IN a ruling with implications for Oklahoma, the U.S. Supreme Court has found states may use nonvoting as a factor in removing citizens from voter registration rolls.

Oklahoma is one of five states that uses failure to vote as a trigger for deregistration. Here, a citizen who fails to vote in two consecutive general elections is sent an address confirmation mailing by the state Election Board. Simply returning that mailing preserves a citizen’s status as an enrolled voter.

However, if the address confirmation isn’t returned, the citizen is designated as an “inactive” voter. That person must then fail to vote in two more general elections before being removed. Thus, the removal process can take up to eight years in Oklahoma.

In Ohio, whose law was challenged for allegedly violating federal law, an address confirmation mailing is sent after a citizen fails to vote for two years. Voters who don’t return that form and then fail to vote for another four years are presumed to have moved and are removed from voter rolls.

Among other things, the National Voter Registration Act requires states to routinely remove the names of voters who are ineligible because they have moved or died. But states are required to provide notice before removing a voter’s name from the rolls. Challengers argued Ohio violated federal law because the address confirmation mailing was prompted solely by the failure to vote.

In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court determined that Ohio follows federal law “to the letter.”

“It is undisputed that Ohio does not remove a registrant on change-of-residence grounds unless the registrant is sent and fails to mail back a return card and then fails to vote for an additional four years,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote.

The court rejected arguments that Ohio used failure to vote as the sole criteria for removal, noting, “Ohio removes registrants only if they have failed to vote and have failed to respond to a notice.”

Those challenging Ohio’s practice argued federal law allowed states to consider a citizen’s failure to vote only after the person failed to respond to an address confirmation request, but that federal law didn’t allow failure to vote to be the sole reason an address confirmation request was sent in the first place.

The court majority found that argument “distorts” the plain meaning of the federal law and was “nonsensical.”

Critics also claimed address confirmation requests are likely to be ignored as junk mail. But the court majority noted confirmation requests are “nothing like the solicitations for commercial products or contributions that recipients may routinely discard.” The notices warn recipients that unless they take “the simple and easy step of mailing back the preaddressed, postage prepaid card — or take the equally easy step of updating their information online — their names may be removed from the voting rolls … It was Congress’s judgment that a reasonable person with an interest in voting is not likely to ignore notice of this sort.”

It’s estimated 24 million voter registrations nationwide are either invalid or significantly inaccurate. Ignoring that problem only increases the potential for fraud. It’s welcome news the court has upheld sensible, nondiscriminatory methods of preserving election integrity.