The Supreme Court Tuesday granted one new case dealing with Ohio’s voter registration lists.
At issue in Husted v. Randolph Institute is whether Ohio’s voter registration list-maintenance process, using a voter’s inactivity as reason to send a confirmation notice, is lawful.
Ohio gives voters who have been inactive for two years a confirmation notice that requires a response. If no response is obtained and the voter remains inactive for four years, then Ohio removes the voter from its lists. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and Help America Vote Act of 2002 both prevent states from stripping names off its voter registration rolls because a person is not voting.
The resolution of Husted v. Randolph Institute could become another pressure point in the debate on the voting process.
Ensuring the legitimacy of U.S. elections has become a much more prominent topic in the aftermath of the 2016 elections, mostly due to President Trump. After winning the White House, Trump claimed that 3 to 5 million illegal immigrants voted in the 2016 election while his opponents have raised concerns about foreign powers meddling to affect the outcome of the election.
