You’ll recall learning last year that Secretary of State Jon Husted’s office had actively scrubbed tens of thousands of registered Ohio voters from the rolls. The rationale was convoluted, insisting for the most part that those voters had either failed to show up at the polls in recent years or failed to confirm their home addresses. Some were legit: People die and people move out of Ohio, and their names should indeed be dropped from the database. The total extent of the purge has remained unclear; state officials point out that this has been business-as-usual for years.
As PBS’s Chris Bury once put it, “When it comes to the right to vote, Ohio is a ‘use it or lose it’ state.” Multiple courts have come to different conclusions on whether that policy holds up.
This article appears in May 24-30, 2017.
