Study: Voter Purges Spiked In States Previously Covered By Law Gutted By SCOTUS
Source: Talking Points Memo
By Tierney Sneed | July 20, 2018 10:50 am
Among the changes in the voting rights landscape after a 2013 Supreme Court decision gutting the Voting Rights Act was an uptick in voter purges in states and localities that, before the ruling, had to get federal approval for changes to their elections policies, a new report from the Brennan Center said.
The decision, Shelby County v. Holder, ushered in a slew of voting restrictions passed by the states that previously had to go through a so-called “preclearance” process, where a federal judge or the Justice Department had to OK their election policies, due to their history of racially discriminatory voting laws.
According to the Brennan Center report released Friday, those localities exhibited a median voter removal rate that was 2 percentage points higher in the election cycle after the Shelby the decision, than the election cycle that preceded it. In the states and localities that were not affected by the Shelby decision, the removal rate “did not budge,” the report said.
“Though 2 percentage points may seem like a small number, more than 2 million fewer voters would have been removed if these counties had removal rates comparable to the rest of the country,” the report said. “Previously covered jurisdictions ended up removing more than 9 million voters between the presidential elections of 2012 and 2016.”
Read more: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/voter-purges-spiked-in-states-previously-covered-by-law-gutted-by-supreme-court-brennan-center
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