Voter-Purging Case In Ohio Going To Supreme Court

WASHINGTON, DC — The United States Supreme Court will consider the rights of states to purge voters who haven't cast ballots in a while, thanks to an appeal from Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted. A lower court ruled against Husted's ability to purge voter rolls of inactive voters, and the secretary of state appealed the decision. Now the court will consider reinstating the purging technique.

The justices of SCOTUS agreed to hear Husted's challenge on Tuesday. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in September that inactivity was not a valid reason to purge someone off a voter roll. Husted appealed that decision to SCOTUS.

The case started in April 2016, when the A. Phillip Randolph Institute, the ACLU and the Northeast Ohio Coalition of the Homeless, along with Ohio resident Larry Harmon, sued Husted for purging voters. Specifically, the groups were targeting the law that gave Ohio permission to cancel voter registration if the voter had been inactive for a 2-year period.

The groups argued the National Voting Rights Act of 1993 and the Help America Vote Act of 2002 protect inactive voters from purging.

The appeals court agreed, issuing a ruling that allowed 7,500 people to cast ballots despite being removed from voter rolls, according to Bloomberg.

Husted claims the purging of inactive voters was merely one part of a larger voter maintenance that resulted in the removal of nearly 560,000 deceased Ohioans from voter rolls. He added that there were also 1.65 million Ohio voters who were registered more than once.

"Maintaining the integrity of the voter rolls is essential to conducting an election with efficiency and integrity," Husted said in a statement. "The decision by the Court to hear this case is encouraging. I remain confident that once the Justices review this case they will rule to uphold the decades-old process that both Republicans and Democrats have used in Ohio to maintain our voter rolls as consistent with federal law."

Husted has claimed the suit against the state was politically motivated, coming shortly before the 2016 presidential election. The ACLU has stated the suit is an attempt to prevent large-scale voter suppression.

“Ohio’s purge of eligible voters has served as a powerful mechanism of voter suppression. Ohio has purged hundreds of thousands of people from the voter rolls simply because they have exercised their right not to vote in a few elections," said Freda Levenson, legal director of the ACLU of Ohio. "This purge process violates the National Voter Registration Act. We are confident that the Supreme Court will uphold the correct decision from the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and will ultimately ensure that eligible Ohio voters may not be stricken from the rolls.”

Photo from Shutterstock