If it has been years since you've actually exercised your constitutional right to vote, does a state have the right to clear your name from its voter registration roll? According to the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision yesterday, the answer is, yes.
The five conservative-leaning justices on the Court ruled in this case that Ohio's practice of purging infrequent voters from registration rolls does not violate federal law.
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Ohio says the policy is needed to keep voting rolls current by removing people who have died or moved away. Makes sense.
But how does the Left view this? The same way it views everything else in American life now – through the outraged lens of minority oppression. Justice Sonia Sotomayor says the ruling endorses the disenfranchisement of minority and low-income Americans.
Top Democrats are already saying this decision will give a boost to Republican voter-suppression efforts. Actually, Democrats who know their history will remember that the Democratic Party invented voter suppression after the Civil War, when the KKK roamed the South intimidating, attacking, and frequently killing black voters.
The Ohio policy is not harsh.
The Ohio policy is not harsh. If you don't vote for two years, you get a registration confirmation notice in the mail. Then, if you don't reply to the notice, and if you still don't vote for four years in a row, then you're purged from the rolls. So, you have a six-year window to make sure your registration is current. In many parts of the world, this would be considered a generous policy.
Clearly, more people need to vote in Ohio. And if Ohio has this problem, you know pretty much every other state has it too. We want our elections to have integrity, yet the Left can't stand this concept, or voter ID laws, which they say targets minorities and the poor who may not have the means to acquire an ID. These kinds of laws also unfairly target dead voters, which, let's face it, have been known to be the Left's favorite kind of voter.