The U.S. Supreme Court will decide on a Trump-backed Ohio voting rights policy that has disenfranchised thousands of American voters by using lists to purge names of those who vote infrequently.

The justices will hear arguments in Republican-governed Ohio’s appeal of a lower court ruling that blocked its policy of erasing from voter registration lists people who do not regularly cast a ballot. Under the policy, such registration is deleted if the person goes six years without either voting

But national voting rights and civil rights activists said the commission and Trump's call for new laws is just a pretext to suppress voter participation particularly among the poor, the elderly and people of color. “I’m thrilled that the commission has been disbanded, but also will definitely keep

"Countless Ohioans have been denied their right to vote as a result of these purges," said Stuart Naifeh, an attorney for Demos, which is among the organizations challenging Ohio's law. [...]

“The use of the immigration databases are inaccurate, discriminatory and inappropriate for voter list maintenance. We know that it results in inaccurate purging of eligible voters,” said Katherine Culliton-González, a lawyer at think tank Demos who represented plaintiffs challenging Florida’s method

"The right to vote is so fundamental that Congress wanted to make sure people can continue to exercise it even if they don’t exercise it in every election," said Stuart Naifeh, a lawyer at Demos, the advocacy group that represents Harmon, the A. Philip Randolph Institute and the Northeast Ohio

Demos and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) will host a media call to discuss the upcoming Supreme Court oral argument in the case of Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute.

“Ohio is the only state that does it based on not voting in a two-year period,” says Dale E. Ho, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project, which along with the public policy group Demos, is representing Harmon and two Ohio nonprofit organizations. “It doesn’t make a lot

“Compared to any other democracy in the world, we have some of the lowest numbers in terms of participation and turnout,” Katherine Culliton-Gonzalez, a senior counsel for the think tank Demos, told WhoWhatWhy. [...]

The ACLU and public policy organization Demos, have filed a lawsuit against Ohio’s Secretary of State Jon Husted (R), for violating the NVRA “when he purged voters based on their failure to vote,” a ACLU press release read in part.