Republicans aim to kill voter registration law that's a little too effective for their tastes
Republicans aim to kill voter registration law that's a little too effective for their tastes
Republicans are aggressively mounting their next attack on voting rights by trying to dismantle the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, otherwise known as the "motor voter" law, which required states to let people register to vote at public agencies like the Department of Motor Vehicles. It was wildly successful, writes Mother Jones's Ari Burman.
In its first year in effect, more than 30 million people registered or updated their registrations through the NVRA. Roughly 16 million people per year have used it to register ever since.
Too successful, in fact, for Republicans, who are now trying to build on their success of weakening the Voting Rights Act at the Supreme Court in 2013.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear the newest challenge to the law, concerning whether Ohio can remove voters from the rolls who don’t vote over a six-year period. If a voter in Ohio misses an election, doesn’t respond to a subsequent mailing from the state, and then sits out two more elections, he or she is removed from the registration list, even if this person would otherwise be eligible to vote. Critics of this process say it turns voting into a “use it or lose it” right and will open the door to wider voter purges.
Ohio purged 2 million voters from 2011 to 2016, more than any other state, including over 840,000 for infrequent voting. At least 144,000 voters in Ohio’s three largest counties, home to Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati, have been purged since the 2012 election, with voters in Democratic-leaning neighborhoods twice as likely to be removed as those in Republican-leaning ones, according to a Reuters analysis.
A federal appeals court ruled in September 2016 that the state’s purging of infrequent voters violated the NVRA, which states that someone cannot be removed from the rolls “by reason of the person’s failure to vote.” As a result of that ruling, 7,500 people who had been purged from the rolls were reinstated and were able to vote in the 2016 election.
Of course, Ohio isn't the only state where the law is being targeted. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach authored legislation mandating that voters show proof-of-citizenship in order to register. A federal appeals court temporarily blocked the law in 2016 until it could be reviewed, a case that is on the docket for March. But ultimately, Republicans would like to see Ohio-type purges of the rolls take place in as many as a dozen states. In fact, last June the Department of Justice sent letters to 44 states requesting information on how they planned to execute a voter roll purge.
A win in the Ohio case would only encourage Republicans to redouble their efforts, says Vanita Gupta, who led the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division under Obama.
“It’s a hugely significant case,” Gupta says. “If the court comes out with a broad ruling that says inactivity in voting is sufficient proof to kick a voter off of the rolls, that could have broad implications across the country for how voters are purged off the rolls per the National Voter Registration Act.”
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