The Secretary of State says no voters will be removed from the rolls before the November election, in spite of the US Supreme Court ruling upholding Ohio’s process of deleting inactive voters’ registrations.
Secretary of State Jon Husted sent a letter to all 88 boards of elections, telling them to take no action until further notice on maintaining voter rolls, which he says has been on hold since the lawsuit was filed in 2016. Husted says deleting voters’ registrations this close to the general election would violate the National Voter Registration Act. Ohio’s process involves sending mailings to voters who haven’t cast ballots in more than two years, asking them if they are still at the address attached to their registration. If those voters don’t respond and then don’t vote in the four years following, those voters’ names are deleted and they have to re-register. It’s unclear how many people are in the queue to be removed from the voting rolls but the number is thought to be at least in the tens of thousands.
