## Facts

- Ohio maintained voter rolls through an address-based Postal Service process and a “Supplemental Process” keyed to voter inactivity.
- Under the Supplemental Process, if a registrant engaged in no “voter activity” for two consecutive years, Ohio sent a confirmation notice with a prepaid return card to confirm or update the registrant’s address.
- The notice warned that if the registrant did not return the card, the registrant could remain eligible by voting during the period covering the next two general federal elections (about four years).
- If the registrant neither returned the card nor voted for the next four years (including two general federal elections), Ohio removed the registrant from the voter rolls.
- Larry Harmon voted in 2008 but did not vote in 2010, 2012, or 2014; when he attempted to vote in 2015, he learned his registration had been canceled under the Supplemental Process, and he asserted he never received the notice.
- Voter-advocacy organizations and Harmon challenged the Supplemental Process as inconsistent with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), as amended by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA).

## Issues

1. Whether the NVRA’s “Failure-to-Vote Clause” bars a state from using nonvoting to trigger a confirmation notice and, after no response, to complete removal following additional nonvoting.
2. Whether Ohio’s Supplemental Process fits within the NVRA’s change-of-residence removal procedures and HAVA’s related list-maintenance provisions.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the Sixth Circuit in a 5–4 decision.
- The Court held that the NVRA and HAVA permit Ohio to use nonvoting as part of a list-maintenance process when removal occurs only after (1) a mailed confirmation notice is not returned and (2) the registrant then does not vote during the next two general federal election cycles.
- The Court concluded Ohio’s process followed the NVRA’s prescribed confirmation-notice procedure for change-of-residence removals and did not remove registrants “by reason of” failure to vote alone.

## Legal Principles

- The NVRA permits removal for change of residence only if the registrant confirms a move in writing or fails to return a statutory confirmation notice and then fails to vote during the period covering the next two general federal elections.
- The NVRA’s Failure-to-Vote Clause prohibits removal solely because a registrant did not vote; it does not forbid using nonvoting as an informational trigger to send confirmation notices or as one component in the statutorily authorized notice-and-waiting procedure.
- HAVA clarifies that the Failure-to-Vote Clause does not bar states from using the NVRA’s specified confirmation-notice procedures, while still forbidding removal based only on nonvoting.
- List-maintenance programs must be uniform and nondiscriminatory and comply with the Voting Rights Act; a uniform trigger applied to all registrants based on inactivity is not invalid on its face under the NVRA.

## Conclusion

The Court upheld Ohio’s inactivity-based voter-roll process, holding that federal law allows a state to initiate address confirmation after a period of nonvoting and to remove a registrant only after the registrant fails to respond to a mailed notice and then continues not to vote for the period covering two general federal elections.


Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Inst., 138 S. Ct. 1833 (2018)