FAKE NEWS: TIME manipulates facts on SCOTUS ruling on voting rolls
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in the Ohio voting rolls case, a decision impacting the present of targeting people who haven’t cast ballots in years. TIME Magazine could see to keep the story straight, adding another item to the fake news pie, publishing this headline “Supreme Court Allows Ohio to Purge Thousands of Voters After 2 Years of Inactivity.”
TIME credits AP, but the title was changed from the released “Supreme Court allows Ohio, other state voter purges”…which has it’s own set of virtuous and biased language (e.g. “States can target people who haven’t cast ballots in a while in efforts to purge their voting rolls.”)
photo/ Gordon Johnson
SCOTUS decided that Ohio was within the bounds of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act to remove individuals from the rolls after 6 years (12 elections) of not voting and multiple attempts to contact.
That doesn’t seem like “awhile” or targeting people and definitely NOT the lie of “2 Years of Inactivity.”
Justice Samuel Alito said for the court that Ohio is complying with the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, defending their 5-4 ruling.
“A state violates the failure-to-vote clause only if it removes registrants for no reason other than their failure to vote,” he wrote.
Justice Stephen Breyer, who wrote the dissenting opinion said that, because most voters tend to ignore the notices they recieve, it’s their failure to show up to the polls that constitutes the main reason they’re kicked off the rolls.
“More often than not, the state fails to receive anything back from the registrant, and the fact that the state hears nothing from the registrant essentially proves nothing at all,” he explained.
Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown wrote on Twitter that “Ohio should be working to make voting easier, not harder. Instead, today’s decision empowers Ohio to further strip away the right to vote for thousands of Ohioans, threatening the integrity of our state’s election process.”
Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan called the ruling “deeply disappointing,” adding that “the right to vote is a fundamental one—and it is under constant assault.”
