Ohio: Federal judge deals another blow to group challenging voter roll purge | Cleveland Plain Dealer

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that notification forms Ohio sends to voters in its process to remove inactive voters from its rolls are compliant with federal law, dealing another blow to a group challenging the state’s voter purge process. The groups suing Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted said all voters the state deleted from its rolls from 1995 through 2016 through a disputed process were actually removed unlawfully because the state’s notices for removal didn’t comply with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. Senior U.S. District Judge George Smith disagreed in an opinion issued Wednesday, largely ruling against the plaintiffs and saying the forms complied with federal law. He struck down arguments from the plaintiffs that said voters weren’t told of the deadlines to respond to the forms and weren’t informed of the consequences of failing to respond.

Ohio: Challenge to Ohio’s voting roll purges persists after Supreme Court decision | Cleveland Plain Dealer

Three months after they lost a U.S. Supreme Court challenge to Ohio’s process for removing inactive voters from its rolls, the lawsuit’s plaintiffs are back in federal court with a related claim: the notification forms Ohio used to initiate voter removal are illegal. The plaintiffs say all voters the state deleted from the rolls from 1995 through 2016 through the disputed process upheld by the Supreme Court were actually removed unlawfully because the state’s notices for removal didn’t comply with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. On Sept. 14, the Ohio A. Philip Randolph Institute, the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless and Larry Harmon asked U.S. District Judge George C. Smith to reinstate all eligible voters who were sent the deficient notices, or take other measures to protect their voting rights in next month’s election.

Georgia: Voter registration purges soared then fell | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

After more than 668,000 voter registrations were canceled in Georgia in 2017, election officials are removing far fewer people from voting rolls this election year. Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who oversees elections, is no longer purging names from the state’s list of 6.8 million eligible voters as he runs for governor against Democrat Stacey Abrams. But Kemp’s record of trimming inactive registered voters — more than 1 million since he took office in 2010 — is drawing criticism from his opponents who say he’s limiting opportunities to vote, especially among low-income and minority Georgians who are more likely to have their registrations canceled.

Wisconsin: 21,000 Milwaukee residents will get their voter registrations reinstated before the election | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

About 21,000 Milwaukee residents who were cut from the voter rolls last year will regain their voter registration before the Nov. 6 election. The state Elections Commission on Tuesday unanimously agreed to allow local clerks to reinstate the voter registration for thousands of people who were taken off the voter rolls last year. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said he planned to reinstate the registrations of about 21,000 people. The Milwaukee Elections Commission will work with the state agency on the issue. “These are people who never should have been dropped from the rolls in the first place,” Barrett said. 

National: Thousands at risk from rightwing push to purge eligible voters from US rolls | The Guardian

In June last year, Luis, a resident of Virginia, was astonished to discover that his name and personal details, including home address, had been posted on the internet by a group known as the Public Interest Legal Foundation (Pilf). Luis’s data had been released by the group, along with hundreds of other names, as an appendix to Pilf’s two-part report called “Alien Invasion”. The front cover showed a UFO hovering ominously over a billboard on which the famous tourism slogan “Virginia is for lovers” had been photoshopped to read: “Virginia is for aliens”. In lurid language, Pilf claimed that it had uncovered proof that “large numbers of ineligible aliens are registering to vote and casting ballots”. It warned its readers: “Your vote is at risk. New alien voters are being added to the rolls month after month, and swift changes must be made to ensure that only Americans are choosing American leaders.” The only problem was that Luis, in common with dozens of other Virginians on the list posted by Pilf, was not in fact an “alien”. He was born in Los Angeles and has always enjoyed US citizenship, with full rights to vote since the age of 18. He also happens to be a federal employee of the US immigration service. Yet here he was, his name attached to a report in which Pilf claimed to have discovered more than 5,000 non-citizens in Virginia who had cast 7,474 votes – every one a criminal act amounting to a felony.

New York: Why New York City voters rolls were missing names again, explained | Vox

As New Yorkers go to the polls to vote in state primary elections Thursday, some voters are finding there’s no record of their registration. That includes some prominent media figures: New York Magazine writer Rebecca Traister and HuffPost Editor in Chief Lydia Polgreen were among those who tweeted their names were missing from the rolls at their local polling places — meaning they can’t cast a regular ballot. They were far from the only ones. Others tweeted about their experiences having to sign an affidavit and cast a provisional ballot for the first time in years. Local New York publication Gothamist reported “mass confusion” at some polling stations. The stakes are high this year — there are contested primaries for major statewide offices, including governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general. People whose names aren’t found on the rolls can still vote, they just have to sign a sworn affidavit validating their identify before they can cast a provisional ballot.

National: The Voters Who Disappeared From the Rolls | Literary Hub

The story read like something straight out of Stalinist Russia. But this casualty list was in the United States in the 21st century. Virginia: 41,637 purged. Florida: 182,000 purged. Indiana: 481,235 purged. Georgia: 591,549 purged. Ohio: two million purged. With the flick of a bureaucratic wrist, millions of Americans—veterans, congressional representatives, judges, county officials, and most decidedly minorities—were erased. To be clear, they still had their lives, but in the course of simply trying to cast a ballot, they soon learned that as far as the government was concerned, they did not exist. They were electorally dead. Their very right to vote had disappeared into the black hole of voter roll purges, Interstate Crosscheck, and felony disfranchisement. Some of the walking dead were viscerally “angry.” Others fumed, “This is screwed up!” Most felt “like an outcast,” “empty and unimportant,” and one man was actually reduced to “crying right there in the county elections office.” These were the latest casualties in the war on democracy.

Missouri: Voter Crosscheck may wrongly purge Missouri voters from voting rolls | St. Louis American

U.S. citizens across the country soon will vote on all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, for 35 U.S. senators and three dozen governorships. The House of Representatives and possibly the Senate are up for grabs. Given the high stakes, voters would do well to check at least a month ahead of time with their local board of elections to see if they’re still registered to vote. This is especially true for people of color. The reason is that millions could find their right to vote challenged or taken away under suspicion that they’re trying to vote more than once, largely due to 26 states using the Interstate Voter Crosscheck system, which compares lists of voters in different states and challenges the registration of those whose names come up more than once.

National: Many states are purging voters from the rolls – On election day, stay away | The Economist

In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. Among other things, this required places with a history of discriminating against non-white voters to obtain federal approval before changing the way they conducted elections. In the ensuing decades it narrowed, and in some cases reversed, racial gaps in voting. Congress repeatedly reauthorised the Act, most recently in 2006 for 25 years. But in 2013 the Supreme Court gutted the pre-clearance provision. Since then states that had been bound by it have purged voters from their rolls at a greater rate than other states. That is part of a dramatic rise in voter purges in recent years. Many on the right say such purges and other policies are essential to ensuring electoral integrity. Others see a darker purpose.

North Carolina: Judge voids part of North Carolina election law | Associated Press

A federal judge invalidated part of North Carolina elections law that allows one voter to challenge another’s residency, a provision that activist groups used to scrub thousands of names from rolls ahead of the 2016 elections. U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs said in an order signed Wednesday that the residency challenges are pre-empted by the 1993 federal “motor voter” law aimed at expanding voting opportunities. The National Voter Registration Act “encourages the participation of qualified voters in federal elections by mandating certain procedures designed to reduce the risk that a voter’s registration might be erroneously canceled. Defendants’ conduct contravened these procedures,” Biggs wrote.

Voting Blogs: Lawsuit Seeks Public Info About Controversial Voting Purge Letter | Brennan Center for Justice

The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law is suing the Justice Department today for refusing to turn over documents related to a controversial letter DOJ sent last year, which sought detailed information about how states maintain their voter rolls. Voting rights groups are concerned that it could be a prelude to pressuring states to engage in aggressive voter purges — the often-flawed process of deleting names from voter registration lists. “The public has a right to know why the Justice Department sent this letter, and what information it received from states in response,” said Jonathan Brater, counsel in the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program. “The Justice Department should be fighting to protect the voting rights of all Americans. We are concerned, though, that this letter may be part of a broader effort to undermine those rights, and we are going to court to find out.”

National: Red state and GOP efforts to purge voter rolls have been stymied | Salon

As a key deadline approaches next week on updating statewide voter rolls before the November election, it appears a controversial data-mining operation mostly used by red states to purge legitimate voters is withering, or at least dormant, in 2018. The Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck program, known as Crosscheck, has been blasted in the press, academia,legal briefs, and federal court rulings for sloppy analytics that generate tens or hundreds of thousands of suspected duplicate voter registrations in member states. (It uses few data specifics, including common names, producing false positives.) Some of those states have used Crosscheck’s analyses to turn a bland voter roll bookkeeping process (removing dead people, people who moved) into a partisan cudgel. This June, a federal district court issued a restraining order against Indiana election officials to not use Crosscheck to prematurely purge its voter rolls.

Ohio: Purged voters can cast ballots in U.S. House special election | The Columbus Dispatch

Ohioans who have been purged from state voting rolls since 2011 will be allowed to cast provisional ballots in Tuesday’s special U.S. House election between Republican Troy Balderson and Democrat Danny O’Connor. Secretary of State Jon Husted instructed county boards of elections on Tuesday to accept the ballots of those purged for failing to vote during a six-year span and failing to respond to notices asking them to verify their status. Their votes will be counted after the election once their purging from voting rolls and other information is confirmed. Husted’s office could not estimate how many purged voters could cast ballots on Tuesday. The directive was the result of a federal court order following mediation with plaintiffs and after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in their suit, according to Husted’s memo to county election officials. The plaintiffs reversed course after an earlier agreement and asked that those purged be allowed to vote on Aug. 7. The court agreed.

Virginia: Voter Roll Purges Attract Scrutiny | WVTF

In the last presidential election cycle, almost half a million more people in Virginia were purged from the voter rolls than the previous election cycle. That change comes even as election officials used a faulty database to delete voters who allegedly moved. Jonathan Brater at the Brennan Center for Justice says Virginia is one of four states that has conducted illegal purges. “In recent years, we have seen Virginia attempting to remove higher numbers of suspected non-citizens from the voter rolls. But it turns out that many of those people actually are citizens.”

Voting Blogs: Purges: A Growing Threat to the Right to Vote | Brennan Center for Justice

On April 19, 2016, thousands of eligible Brooklyn voters dutifully showed up to cast their ballots in the presidential primary, only to find their names missing from the voter lists. An investigation by the New York state attorney general found that New York City’s Board of Elections had improperly deleted more than 200,000 names from the voter rolls. In June 2016, the Arkansas secretary of state provided a list to the state’s 75 county clerks suggesting that more than 7,700 names be removed from the rolls because of supposed felony convictions. That roster was highly inaccurate; it included people who had never been convicted of a felony, as well as persons with past convictions whose voting rights had been restored. And in Virginia in 2013, nearly 39,000 voters were removed from the rolls when the state relied on a faulty database to delete voters who allegedly had moved out of the commonwealth. Error rates in some counties ran as high as 17 percent.

Editorials: How the Midterm Elections May Be Compromised | Myrna Pérez/The New York Times

This fall, millions of Americans may head to the polls only to find their names aren’t on voter registration lists anymore. These voters may have to cast provisional ballots. Or worse, they could be turned away from the polls altogether. The cause? Voter purges — an often-flawed method of cleaning up voter registration lists by deleting names from voter rolls. Purges, of course, aren’t necessarily a bad thing. State and local election officials have a real need to ensure voting lists are accurate and up-to-date. During the course of a lifetime, people move. Sometimes people change their names. And inevitably, people die. Voter rolls should reflect those changes. But purges are a growing threat that we’ve found may imperil the right to vote for millions of Americans in the midterm elections in November.

Ohio: Voter purge process restarted with changes to help prevent unnecessary cancellations | Cleveland Plain Dealer

Ohio will restart its controversial voter purge process in the coming weeks, with a few changes to help prevent eligible voters from being removed from the rolls. No voter registrations will be canceled before this November’s mid-term election because federal law bars cancellations within 90 days of an election, and a special election will be held in August for Pat Tiberi’s congressional seat. But county boards of election can begin identifying voters who have not voted in the past two years and mailing them a “confirmation notice,” Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted advised elections officials in a new directive. Notices must be mailed by Aug. 6. Voters then have four years to return the notice, update their registration address or vote. If they don’t, they will be assumed to have moved out of state or died and their registrations will be canceled.

National: Sherrod Brown introduces bill to stop voter purges | The Columbus Dispatch

Sen. Sherrod Brown has reacted to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision supporting the Ohio secretary of state’s policy of purging inactive voters from the rolls with a bill aimed at stopping the practice. Brown, D-Ohio, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., announced Wednesday they are introducing a bill to amend the National Voter Registration Act to clarify that a state may not use someone’s failure to vote or respond to a state notice as a reason to remove them from active voter rolls. The bill is a direct reaction the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute case, in which the high court ruled that states may remove registered voters from rolls if they do not vote in multiple federal elections or if they don’t return a mailed address confirmation form. Brown is a former Ohio secretary of state, while Klobuchar is the top Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee, which has oversight jurisdiction over federal elections.

Editorials: If more states start using Ohio’s system, how many voters will be purged? | The Washington Post

On Monday, the Supreme Court upheld Ohio’s controversial voter purge program in the case Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute. Ohio removes occasional voters from the rolls if they: fail to vote in a general election; do not respond to a postcard asking them to confirm their address; then fail to vote in two more general elections. In a 5-to-4 decision, the court ruled that the purge does not violate the 1993 National Voter Registration Act. Given the Supreme Court’s ruling, other states may adopt Ohio’s Supplemental Process as an aggressive way of removing inactive voters from the rolls. If Ohio’s Supplemental Process were adopted nationwide, how many other infrequent voters could be removed from the voter registration rolls? We try to answer that question.

Nevada: Election officials to consider changes after court’s voter purge ruling | Associated Press

Nevada’s elections officials say they will consider this summer whether the state will start taking a more aggressive, approach to maintaining its voter rolls as upheld this week by the U.S. Supreme Court. The court in a 5-4 ruling Monday affirmed Ohio’s practice of identifying voters for potential removal if they don’t vote in a federal election. That state removes voters from the rolls if they don’t return an address confirmation card or vote for the following four years.

Editorials: The Battle for Voting Rights Lives On | Jonathan Bernstein/Bloomberg

The first thing to know about the Supreme Court decision that allows Ohio to purge its voter rolls is that it was a case of statutory construction, not constitutional interpretation. The justices were only trying to figure out what ordinary laws say, not what the Constitution means. … The second thing to know is that the Constitution doesn’t matter here in large part because there is no established constitutional right to vote for Ohio or anyone else to violate. Should there be? Yes. While Scott Lemieux points out the limits of advocating for and even passing a constitutional amendment making a right to vote explicit, there’s an excellent case to be made that such a right is already right there in the Constitution — indeed, that it is fundamental to the entire project the Framers were undertaking, even if, for them, that right was severely restricted, something that the 15th, 19th and 26th amendments corrected. The Constitution certainly does not require direct election for all offices, but it does require that all offices, directly or indirectly, get their authority from popular elections, which to me at least strongly implies that voting is fundamental to their notion of a republic. (I should remind everyone at this point that “republic” and “democracy” are best treated as synonyms, regardless of the vocabulary folks used in the 18th century, when they had a lot less experience with these things.)

Georgia: Decision allows Georgia to remove inactive voters from the rolls | McClatchy

A federal lawsuit challenging Georgia’s system of removing inactive voters from the registration rolls was formally withdrawn on Tuesday after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Ohio’s similar voter “purge” policy did not violate federal law. In a 5-4 decision, the high court held that Ohio is not violating the National Voter Registration Act by sending address-confirmation notices to registered voters when they fail to vote in a federal election — and then eliminating their names from the rolls if they don’t respond and fail to vote in the next two federal elections over a four-year period. The decision reversed a lower court ruling that found Ohio’s policy violated the voter-registration law by using non-voting to trigger the confirmation notices.

Editorials: The Ohio Purge and the Future of Voting | Dale Ho/The New York Times

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 to uphold Ohio’s program of canceling registrations of infrequent voters — a decision that history shows disproportionately strikes minority and low-income voters from the rolls. Under Ohio’s program, which a federal appeals court had struck down as violating the National Voter Registration Act, registered voters who don’t cast a ballot in two years are sent a notice asking them to confirm that they still reside at the same address. If they don’t respond, and then fail to vote in the next two federal elections, they are assumed to have moved to a different county and are excised from the rolls.

Editorials: In Ohio, Supreme Court delivers GOP a victory in the war on voting | The Washington Post

Imagine this scenario. Like many people, you didn’t bother voting in the last election or two, because you were busy, or none of the races really interested you, or maybe you’re in the military and were stationed overseas, or maybe you just haven’t gotten around to it for a while. You vaguely remember getting a notice about your registration from the state board of elections, but you threw it away with the other junk mail. You know you’re registered, so there shouldn’t be a problem. Then, on the next Election Day, you show up to vote only to discover that you’ve been “purged.” Because you didn’t vote for a time and you didn’t return that letter, the state has kicked you off the voting rolls. Today, the Supreme Court said that’s just fine.

Ohio: No voters will be purged before November election, secretary of state says | Cleveland Plain Dealer

Monday’s Supreme Court decision upholding Ohio’s process of canceling certain voter registrations won’t affect elections held in August and November this year. No voters will be removed as a result of failing to vote for several years, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s office confirmed Tuesday. Ohio’s 88 county board of elections were directed on Monday to not take any action to use the state’s “supplemental process” for removing voters from the rolls ahead of the November election. The supplemental process allows elections officials to cancel registrations if a voter has not cast a ballot in two years and then fails to vote or respond to a notice within the following four years.

Indiana: Federal judge blocks Indiana from enforcing voter purge law | Reuters

A federal judge on Friday blocked the state of Indiana from enforcing a 2017 law allowing election officials to remove voters from the rolls if they were flagged by a controversial tracking system. U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt ruled in a legal challenge brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Common Cause Indiana and other groups that the legislation violates the National Voter Registration Act and threatens to disenfranchise eligible voters. “The court agrees with Common Cause that the greater public interest is in allowing eligible voters to exercise their right to vote without being disenfranchised without notice,” Pratt wrote in her 28-page ruling.

Ohio: U.S. Supreme Court upholds Ohio’s process for updating voter registration rolls: Read the decision here | Cleveland Plain Dealer

A divided U.S. Supreme Court on Monday upheld Ohio’s method for removing ineligible voters from its rolls, saying it does not violate any part of the National Voter Registration Act. Failure to cast a ballot for two years triggers Ohio’s removal process. Notices are sent to voters whose registration is flagged. Registration is canceled if there’s no response to the notices, no votes are cast during the next four years and the voter’s address isn’t updated. “Ohio removes the registrants at issue on a permissible ground: change of residence,” said the 5-4 decision authored by Justice Samuel Alito. “The failure to return a notice and the failure to vote simply serve as evidence that a registrant has moved, not as the ground itself for removal.”

Editorials: Ohio’s voter purges were upheld by the Supreme Court. That doesn’t make them defensible. | Daniel Nichanian/NBC

Only 41 percent of registered voters went to the polls in Ohio’s 2014 general elections; the following year, just 43 percent voted. In the face of these abysmal rates, state officials should be focused on engaging the electorate and improving participation. But Ohio instead treats a failure to vote over such a two-year period as sufficient reason to trigger the process of removing someone from the voter rolls entirely. And on Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that doing so was perfectly legal. Registered voters in the state who have not cast a ballot over two years are — and will continue to be — sent a notice by the local election board to confirm their registration. If they do not respond to the notice, and if they do not engage the electoral process over the following four years, they are purged from the voter registration lists.

Ohio: State Awaits Supreme Court Ruling In Voter Removal Case | WVXU

Any day now, the U.S. Supreme Court may decide a case that could change how Ohio removes people from voter rolls. The court heard arguments in Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute in January. Federal law lays out a process for taking people’s names off the registered voter list if they have moved to a new address and haven’t updated election officials. Ohio is one of several states to begin the removal process if voters skip elections and don’t have other contact with their local election board. … Under federal law, state election officials can send a forwardable confirmation mailer to the address asking if the voter still lives there. A voter can send the card back in either to confirm that they do, or to update their address. If state officials don’t receive any response, federal law requires them to wait four years. If the voter doesn’t cast a ballot or update their address, they can be taken off the rolls.

Indiana: Federal Judge Hears Case On Voter List Maintenance Law | NPR

Voter advocacy groups say an Indiana law will illegally throw Hoosiers off the voting rolls. And they’re suing to stop the state from using that law. A federal court hearing Wednesday centered on Indiana’s use of what’s known as the Interstate Crosscheck system. The Crosscheck system, which is run by the Kansas Secretary of State, looks for voters who seem to be registered in two different states. If it finds apparent matches, those matches get sent to participating states, including Indiana. The state then does its own check, and if enough voter info lines up, it’s forwarded to individual counties.