Supreme Court upholds Ohio voter registration purge policy

Andrew Chung

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday revived Ohio's contentious policy of purging infrequent voters from registration rolls in a ruling powered by the five conservative justices and denounced by liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor as an endorsement of the disenfranchisement of minority and low-income people.

In the 5-4 decision in a closely watched voting rights case in which all four liberal justices dissented, the high court overturned a lower court's ruling that Ohio's policy violated the National Voter Registration Act, a 1993 federal law that forbade removing voters from registration lists for failing to vote.

Voters purged from registration rolls who sued to challenge the policy in the Republican-governed state argued that the practice illegally erased thousands of voters from registration rolls and disproportionately impacted racial minorities and poor people who tend to back Democratic candidates........To Read More....