US Supreme Court allows deletion of those who do not vote from voter lists

The US Supreme Court 11 June made a decision allowing states to remove those who do not come to the polls from the voter lists.

Фото: Depositphotos

The lawsuit concerned a law enacted in Ohio, it permits deleting from the list of voters people who did not vote for 6 years and did not confirm their place of residence in response to requests from the authorities, writes USA Today.

This case law also protects similar laws in six other states: Pennsylvania, Georgia, Oregon, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Montana.

The lawsuit was filed by civil rights protection groups in Ohio, because, in their opinion, the law passed beats primarily on poor people and people with disabilities.

Judge Samuel Alito noted that it is estimated that every eighth name on the lists of American voters has inaccuracies or is invalid. He stressed that a person’s inability to vote cannot be the only reason for removing him from the list, but Ohio’s law provides for a person to be removed from voter registration if he did not vote and did not respond to notifications for six years to confirm his address. accommodation.

At the same time, Judge Stephen Breuer wrote a 18-page dissenting opinion, in which he noted that the majority of voters simply ignored requests to confirm their residential address, which makes refusal to vote is actually the main reason for removing a person from the voter lists. According to him, the number of people who do not vote or ignore requests for confirmation of the address, far exceeds the number of those who actually moved.

Experts believe that this decision of the Supreme Court is a major victory for the Republicans, who tend to benefit from a lower turnout, and a loss for the Democrats, who get more successful results in elections with a high turnout.

The state of Ohio removed thousands of people from the voter lists who did not vote for two years and did not respond to notifications asking them to confirm their residential address, after which they did not appear at the polling stations for another four years. The lawsuit against the state was filed after the election in 2015, when those who had not voted since Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, found that they were no longer registered voters, and went to court.

In accordance with federal laws enacted in 1993 and 2002, states cannot remove voters from registration lists due to their non-attendance. But they can do this if voters do not respond to notifications asking them to confirm their address.

The question for the court was whether the failure to appear at a vote could be the first trigger leading to removal from the list. The US Court of Appeals in 6 constituency in 2016 decided that non-voting could not be such a trigger, which resulted in the restoration of Ohio residents to the 7 515 electoral registers.

However, the US Supreme Court now decided otherwise.

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