Judicial Watch Files Supreme Court Brief Supporting Ohio’s Right to Clean Voter Rolls

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch has announced that it filed an amicus curiae brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of Ohio’s efforts to ensure that its voter rolls are up to date. The case is on appeal from the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which held Ohio’s process is in violation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) (Jon Husted, Ohio Secretary of State v. Philip Randolph Institute, et al. (No. 16-980)).

In filing its amicus brief in support of Ohio’s voter registration law, Judicial Watch argued that the Sixth Circuit’s 2-1 ruling would undermine the 2014 settlement agreement between Judicial Watch and its litigation partner, True the Vote, and the State of Ohio (Judicial Watch and True the Vote v. Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (No. 2:12-cv-00792)).

The settlement agreement required Ohio to contact inactive voters every year to confirm they had not moved or died, as one of many steps to fulfill Ohio’s voter list maintenance obligations under the NVRA. In that lawsuit, Judicial Watch and True the Vote alleged violations of the NVRA by the State of Ohio.

In its amicus brief to the Supreme Court, Judicial Watch argues that in preventing Ohio from cleaning its voter rolls, the lower court “inverted the plain meaning” of the federal voter list integrity law. Judicial Watch contends that Ohio should be permitted to continue its process of “sending of a statutory confirmation notice to any registrant that has not had any voting-related activity for two years.”

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