Columbus, OH – Robert Alt, president and chief executive officer at The Buckeye Institute and a member of the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States, issued the following statement after attending the oral arguments in Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute.
“This case hinges on the question of whether states have the authority to take reasonable steps to ensure the accuracy of their voter rolls, which is critical to ensuring the integrity of elections. In today’s oral arguments, the justices’ questions showed that they were deeply and appropriately concerned with assuring Ohio could continue to remove individuals who were deceased or who had moved from its voter rolls. This is exactly what Ohio’s law allows.
“As we outlined in our amicus brief, the U.S. Constitution is clear in giving states sovereign authority over voter qualifications. Ohio has a significant interest in making sure that the votes of Ohio residents count and are not diluted by individuals who do not currently live in the voting precinct. If the Supreme Court were to prohibit Ohio’s practice of sending confirmation notices to verify the residency of inactive voters, then the state’s ability to enforce its residency requirement would be severely impaired to the detriment of Ohio’s voters.”
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