Trump Administration on the Right to Vote: Use It or Lose It

[octoberlib]

The Justice Department backed Ohio’s effort to purge voters who sat out a few elections.
ARI BERMAN
AUG. 8, 2017 11:34 AM


The Trump administration redoubled its support on Monday for efforts to remove people from voter registration rolls, siding with the state of Ohio in a case that could allow states to cancel registrations for voters who fail to cast a ballot over the course of several elections.

The Justice Department released an amicus brief in the case, currently before the Supreme Court, over whether Ohio can continue to remove “infrequent voters” who fail to cast a ballot over a six-year period. One of those voters, Larry Harmon, is a lead plaintiff in the lawsuit brought by Demos and the ACLU of Ohio. The 60-year-old software engineer and Navy veteran voted in 2008 and then returned to the polls for a local referendum in 2015, only to find that he was no longer registered, even though he hadn’t moved or done anything else to change his status.

In the Ohio case, a federal appeals court ruled in September that that state had violated the National Voter Registration Act, a 1993 law that made it easier to register at the DMV and other public agencies and stipulated that voter-roll maintenance “shall not result in the removal of the name of any person from the official list of voters registered to vote in an election for Federal office by reason of the person’s failure to vote.” As a result of that ruling,  7,500 people who would have otherwise been purged were able to vote in the 2016 election, including Harmon.

Ohio has purged 2 million voters from 2011 to 2016, more than any other state, including 1.2 million for infrequent voting. At least 144,000 voters in Ohio’s three largest counties, home to Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati, were 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.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/08/trump-administration-on-the-right-to-vote-use-it-or-lose-it/

[madaboutharry]

1. Another example of republican hypocrisy.

Are not the republicans the ones who always scream about individual choices, freedom, and oppose interference from the nanny state?

So a voter who determines that it is his or her decision to vote only in Presidential elections loses that right. You are now forced to vote even if you don't want to. How does that sqaure with right wingers?

[muntrv]

2. Freedumb only for reich wingers.