A federal judge in Columbus, Ohio sided with the state Wednesday night and upheld their ongoing practice of purging millions of inactive voters from the rolls.
The American Civil Liberty Union had challenged the purge, saying the Republican Secretary of State’s methods have disproportionately impacted voters of color, the poor, and Democrats.
ACLU Senior Policy Director Mike Brickner told ThinkProgress he and his colleagues are now looking at appealing the ruling.
“We believe Ohio’s current system is unconstitutional and violates federal law,” he said. “The election is coming up soon and we need to act quickly. We want to make sure they don’t disenfranchise thousands of people.”
Over the last five years, Ohio has purged about 2 million people from its rolls simply because they have not voted in the past three elections. It is one of just a handful of states that penalize people for not remaining active voters. Under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, commonly know as the “motor voter law,” states can only remove voters from the rolls if they request the removal, die, or move out of state. The law also demands the procedure for purging voters be nondiscriminatory.
Yet a recently-released Reuters analysis found that far more Democrats than Republicans are being purged in Ohio’s most populous counties.
The investigation found that in Ohio’s major cities, including Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati, voters have been removed from the rolls in Democratic-leaning neighborhoods at about twice the rate as in Republican neighborhoods. In some neighborhoods in Cincinnati with a high proportion of poor, African-American residents, as much as 10 percent of the voting population has been purged. Because Democratic voters have lower turnout rates for mid-term, off-year elections, they are at greater risk of being purged. Counties that backed President Obama in 2008 have had far more residents kicked off the rolls than counties that backed John McCain.
Voters who discover they have been purged can re-register before the state’s October 11th deadline. But the ACLU is concerned that many — such as low-income people who move frequently and the homeless — will not receive the notification from the state, and will arrive at the polls this November only to be turned away.
“They may show up to their polling place on election day and find they do not appear in the poll books,” said Brickner. “We’re already seeing that happening. Considering the vast number of people being purged and the expected high turnout for the general election, it could be a real problem.”
Voting rights advocates are considering an expedited appeal to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals based in Cincinnati.
As a key swing state, Ohio has the potential to decide the 2016 election. Past contests in the state have been so close that the hundreds of voters purged from the rolls over the past few years could mean the difference between a Republican or a Democrat in the White House in 2017.