Judges in Georgia and Ohio reject another wave of Republican voter purges

Federal judges in Ohio and Georgia ruled against Republican attempts to limit the number of eligible voters ahead of tight elections in both states.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted an emergency motion by several voting rights groups and ordered Ohio to allow voters purged for not participating in recent elections to cast provisional ballots, the Associated Press reports. The split decision partially overturned a previous federal ruling that voters were not illegally purged from the rolls.

Voting rights groups lost a previous case in the Supreme Court in June after they argued that the Ohio voter roll maintenance process was unconstitutional. The groups then challenged the notices sent to voters informing them that they were being purged for not voting in three federal elections, on the grounds that the notices were too vague.

Danielle Lang, an attorney with the Campaign Legal Center, which has joined the lawsuit, told the Associated Press that the law clearly “disenfranchises Native Americans living on reservations." “We have a choice between a democracy that includes all eligible voters and a system that excludes people based on their circumstances or backgrounds,” she said. “Unless the court steps in, eligible Native American voters including our clients may be denied the right to vote next week due to the state’s deeply flawed system of assigning and verifying voters’ residential addresses.”

Read the full article