Purging the voter rolls
The Supreme Court on Monday upheld Ohio’s aggressive efforts to purge its voting rolls.
The court ruled that a state may kick people off the rolls if they skip a few elections and fail to respond to a notice from state election officials. The vote was 5 to 4, with the more conservative justices in the majority.
The case concerned a guy who voted in 2004 and 2008 but not 2010, 2012, and 2014. In 2015 he wanted to vote against a ballot initiative to legalize marijuana and found he’d been stricken from the voting rolls.
Federal laws prohibit states from removing people from voter rolls “by reason of the person’s failure to vote.” But they allow election officials who suspect that a voter has moved to send a confirmation notice.
The central question in the case was whether a failure to vote could be the reason to send out the notice.
Ohio is more aggressive than any other state in purging its voter rolls. After skipping a single federal election cycle, voters are sent a notice. If they fail to respond and do not vote in the next four years, their names are purged from the rolls.
A few other states use similar approaches, but not one of them moves as fast.
So it’s the most voter-suppressive state in the failure-to-vote column, and the stolen vote on the court just ruled that okie doke.
A Reuters study in 2016 found that at least 144,000 people were removed from the voting rolls in recent years in Ohio’s three largest counties, which are home to Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus.
“Voters have been struck from the rolls in Democratic-leaning neighborhoods at roughly twice the rate as in Republican neighborhoods,” the study found. “Neighborhoods that have a high proportion of poor, African-American residents are hit the hardest.”
Twelve states, generally led by Democrats, filed a brief supporting Mr. Harmon. Seventeen states, generally Republican, filed a brief on the other side.
So to sum up poor and/or black and brown voters are being systematically shut out by the party of the rich and white.
Of course it’s okay. Ohio was one of the states that helped Trump seize a minority win from the candidate who got the more votes in history than all but one other candidate. Republicans need Ohio, and they know it. If this helps to swing a few states into the always red column, that’s just what they want.
And I find it funny that the voter wanted to vote against an initiative typically associated with liberals…they possibly purged one of their own?
But this does seem more likely to hurt Democrats, since Democrats often have lot turnout during off year elections.
Oh well of course they will purge some of their own; that’s unavoidable. But they’re dealing in statistics, not individuals.
Yes, that’s the problem. One of their own…hundreds of opponents.
Weird. Not only did I not know that was illegal, but I thought that’s how it always worked in every state. I swear I was told at some point my voter registration would auto renew as long as I voted at least every 4 (6?) years.
Ethics aside, it’s dispiriting that liberals are so much easier to discourage from voting than conservatives. It seems you just do any random thing to make voting harder, and conservatives benefit.
The USA never ceases to amaze me, what the article describes is compulsory voting with disenfranchisement as a penalty for not voting. USAians claim to be appalled by compulsory voting legislation.
America needs a national electoral commission with uniform rules in regard to voter registration.
It amazes us, too.
You can always register to vote again. You’re not permanently disenfranchised.
Before every election I always go on our state web site, where I input my info and it verifies I’m registered and lets me view an exact copy of the ballot so I can see and research everything I’m voting for.
I’m fine with keeping people permanently registered, but I must admit I’m probably not as sympathetic as others are to someone who doesn’t vote for 7 years, doesn’t reply to mail asking if they’re still at their address, doesn’t check to see if they’re still registered (probably could do that online in Ohio in 2015), and then just shows up and finds they’re not on the rolls. They still should have been allowed to cast a provisional ballot, but, come on, you can put a tiny bit of effort into exercising your right to vote.
There’s some really nasty voter suppression going on: People “accidentally” dropped from the rolls because their name partially matched a felon’s, understaffed and underequpped precincts causing the wait to vote to be many hours, precincts closed so people don’t have a nearby place to vote, etc.
I see someone in line for 3 hours and think, wow, they have a right to be mad, and good for them that they’re still voting. Then I see people that can barely be bothered to lift a finger to vote. I must admit having more sympathy for the former.
Oh ffs – it’s not about sympathy. Come on. It’s about voter suppression.
And this patronizing crap about putting in a little effort – some people deal with multiple jobs plus children plus no car plus no computer plus no public computer within reach etc etc etc etc. That’s why voter suppression suppresses the votes of poor and black / brown people more than rich and white people.
Plus, Skeletor, you’re ignoring the context. You do know the Supreme Court gutted part of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby, right? You know why the VRA was and is important, right? You know the US has a long history of disenfranchisement of black people that people died in the struggle to end, right? You understand why the US has a need to lean heavily on the side of making it as easy as possible to vote? Or don’t you? If you don’t, I recommend Ari Berman’s book Give Us the Ballot.
Skeletor,
“You can always register to vote again. You’re not permanently disenfranchised”
That’s definitely not reassuring. Why should citizens in a democracy need to check the electoral roll because of the possibility that some partisan apparatchik will erase their registrations?
3 hours waiting in line to vote? Jeeeez.
3? In some places it’s ALL DAY.
We are such a mess.
Ophelia,
I’ve never waited more than about 20-30 minutes to vote. In Australia we often wait for days for the results of some elections because of our complicated electoral system, the voters don’t seem to care.They would care if the wait to vote was 3 hours or more.
I think the longest I’ve ever waited to vote was 7or 8 minutes. Last election I was able to walk straight to the counter, hand over my fast ID card that had been mailed to me and step into the booth to vote. In and out in under 2 minutes I’d guess.
Even if there had been a glitch it would simply have meant filling in a provisional ballot, maybe an extra couple of minutes.
Mind you, ~49,000 registered electors, >85% turnout (38% advance voting), 31 polling stations open all day. Makes for an average of 830 electors per station per day. Our election commission actually wants people to vote and is bending over backwards to get under represented minorities to do so.
Rob,
Yes, of course voting would be more efficient in the world’s first democracy.
How popular is Jacinta with the NZ electorate? After the initial excitement she’s disappeared from our MSM.
Jacinda is still popular with those who liked her to begin with and is still getting snarky, patronising and belittling comments from those who didn’t like her or her politics. Par for the course I guess. When you disagree with a male politician comments can be vicious, unfair even, but they seldom seem to be laced with a certain…. air that occurs when that politician is a woman. She’s actually due to give birth this weekend and is now officially on maternity leave for six weeks. For their own reasons media on both the left and the right are making a far bigger deal of it than she is.
I like her. Smart, brave, clear communicator, well meaning but pragmatic. There have been a few speed wobbles, but given labour hadn’t been in power for 9 years that is to be expected.
NZ first democracy? That might be over stating it, but I guess it depends on how you define democracy.
Rob,
NZ is usually described as the first country to give women the vote, so, on that basis it probably can claim the title, unless there are some glitches in the electoral system. Europeans usually say that Finland was the first, but what do they know?
I used to have to wait in line for over an hour to vote, when I lived in Oklahoma City. Now I’m in a much smaller city, and usually walk in, vote, and walk out without any wait. But…our town is so white that no one worries much about disenfranchising voters, because they know the whitest, most conservative, most business-friendly, abortion-unfriendly candidate is going to win, even if they let people like me vote.
A person is supposed to get time off work to vote, but I suspect a lot of employers make that difficult for hourly employees. And if a person is working 3 or 4 part time jobs, each employer will feel no need to let anyone off, because they aren’t working long enough at that job to interfere with voting. I know, because I’ve been there.
The long lines are very deliberate in some areas…it keeps “undesirables” (poor, minority) from voting because they simply can’t. Early voting should help some, but that can be inconvenient, since it may not be as close to your home as the polling place. (We have to go to City Hall, or do a mail in, which is a pain. City Hall now has a security system so sensitive it picks up the metal where my shoulders used to be – most airport systems are not that sensitive. I can see how this could be used to harass someone they thought might not be their sort of voter).
Iknklast, roughly how many polling stations would your district have per 10,000 people?
For us, early voting is postal. When you receive one of the frequent reminders about voting in the post, you can request the papers and a paid return envelope. Or, you can go online and request them to be sent out. Or, you can wander into one of several postal or government agencies and do it. It’s actually becoming markedly more popular than waiting and doing it on the day.
I tend to wait because I’m in a swing electorate and with our proportional voting system it can be useful to vote strategically sometimes (split your electorate vote one way and the party vote another). This year it made no odds in the end.
iknklast
“A person is supposed to get time off to vote”
Federal and state elections in Australia are held on Saturdays, to avoid that problem, or at to least reduce the incidence of employers refusing time off. (I’m not sure if employers can legally refuse to give employees time off to vote) Postal voting is also available, so it would be difficult to disenfranchise voters in the way it occurrs in some areas in the US. Also council elections are usually by postal vote, in my area anyway.
The factor in US elections that seems most significant is the lack of uniformity in voting practices.
Apathy seems to be a more effective tool than suppression. The appalling turnout in California is a terrible message.
Rob, there are 25,000 people in my city, we have 30 polling places. So that would be nearly 15 per 10,000 people. Some areas (usually those with a lot of minority voters) have many fewer places to vote, which is why the lines are so long. Plus, a denser population will lead to longer lines, so the areas where people are crowded into apartments may cover no larger an area, but a lot more people. I happen to live in a precinct dominated by single family households, mostly highly-educated middle class people, and predominantly white (that last describes all but one precinct in our town where the Hispanic population has a higher population density than elsewhere). So they don’t suppress our vote.
Plus, we are the only precinct that routinely elects liberals to the City Council, and I suppose that makes us valuable to look like there is no voter manipulation…and the two members we elect aren’t going to be able to carry any votes, though they can cause some problems when there is a need for unanimity. I fear we’re about to lose that distinction, though, as this particular City Council election is likely to go to the Republican pro-business candidate. The Democrat is a young atheist graphic designer…though he is married to the daughter of the most popular man in town, so that might help.
Anyway, I will say that my polling place in Oklahoma City served probably 10x as many voters as my polling place here. And it was an area that was highly integrated, and in places majority black. In the town I lived in after that (still in Oklahoma), a town of affluent white people and college professors (less affluent, but still mostly white), I never waited in line for a single second.