In a 5-4 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court gave Ohio a victory Monday in a fight over the state’s method for removing people from the voter rolls, a practice that civil rights groups said discourages minority turnout.
Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the majority opinion, said the court’s job was not “to decide whether Ohio’s supplemental process is the ideal method for keeping its voting rolls up to date. The only question before us is whether it violates federal law. It does not.” At least a dozen other politically conservative states said they would adopt a similar practice of seeking to remove voters who have not cast a ballot in a certain number of elections if Ohio prevailed, as a way of keeping their voter registration lists accurate and up to date.
Source: NBC News
Source Bias: Left-Center
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One unclear point: This removes the names of voters who haven’t voted “in a certain number of elections.” How does this specifically “discourage minority turnout?” The same rules apply equally regardless of race, age, gender, etc. People are reminded prior to elections to make sure their voting registration info (address, etc.) is current.
This plan is for removing people from voter rolls who haven’t voted in a certain number of elections. This would apply to all voters equally, regardless of race, etc. People are reminded prior to elections to make sure their voting registration info is current. How would this effect effect minority communities differently from white communities?
Not cleaning up the voter rolls allows for more fraud (there are many anecdotes about the dead voting in certain locales). Claiming that cleaning up voter rolls discriminates against minorities can make some voters angry and more likely to vote against those who want to clean up the rolls.