JUDY WOODRUFF: The Supreme
Court heard arguments today in a
case challenging the removal of

hundreds of thousands of people
from voter rolls in Ohio.

In a moment, Jeffrey Brown will
talk to Marcia Coyle of "The
National Law Journal" about

the questions the justices
asked inside the court.

But we begin with a report
from Karen Kasler of PBS' Ohio
station ideastream about what's

at stake in the Buckeye State.

KAREN KASLER: U.S. Army Sergeant
Joseph Helle was in Iraq in 2006
and 2007, and in Afghanistan

in 2009.

But when he came home to
Ohio in 2011, he found a
battle he didn't expect.

Helle showed up to vote
that fall, and found his
name had been removed
from the voter rolls.

JOSEPH HELLE, Mayor of Oak
Harbor, Ohio: I started crying.

It was heartbreaking to be told
that one of those fundamental
rights that I put my put

my life on the line for, raised
my right hand for, that I
wasn't allowed to exercise it.

And I was protecting it for
others, but others weren't
able to protect it for me.

KAREN KASLER: Helle, who is
now the mayor of Oak Harbor,
a small village near Toledo,

has joined the coalition of
mostly progressive-leaning
groups opposing the
two-pronged approach Ohio

has to maintaining
its voter rolls.

If a voter doesn't cast a ballot
for two years, a postcard or
mailer is sent to the address

listed on the
voter's registration.

If the voter doesn't respond,
and then doesn't vote for
another four years, the voter is

removed from the voting rolls
without further notice, whether
the voter has moved or not.

More than 4.6 million of those
mailers have been sent to voters
since 2011, the year Helle

found out he was removed.

At least hundreds of thousands
of voters have been removed,
but it's unclear exactly how

many.

Republican Secretary of State
Jon Husted says the two-year
window and the mailers are part

of the state's legal obligation
to remove the names of dead,
imprisoned or otherwise

ineligible voters.

JON HUSTED (R), Ohio Secretary
of State: It's trying to say
to the voter, gee, have you

moved?

Do you want to update
your information?

It's done to try to be helpful
to the voter, and helping
them update their information,

and also to make sure that
we maintain the voter rolls,
which is another piece of the

law.

So, you have, in the end, a
six-year period to interact,
to vote, to let us know that

you still want to be
on the voter rolls.

KAREN KASLER: But those
challenging the process
say voting is not a
use-it-or-lose-it right,

and that voters choose not to
cast ballots because of illness,
apathy, or other reasons,

and not just because
they have moved.

FREDA LEVENSON, Legal Director,
ACLU of Ohio: Failing to vote
is a very poor proxy for someone

moving.

Close to 50 percent of
Ohioans don't vote in
every given election.

But not close to 50 percent
of Ohioans have moved.

The number is much
closer to 2 percent.

So the secretary is purging
vast numbers of completely
eligible voters just to try to

target a small, tiny handful
of people who may have moved.

KAREN KASLER: But Husted says
this method of voter roll
maintenance has been in place

Ohio since 1994, with virtually
no problems, until the
lawsuit was filed in 2016.

JON HUSTED: This process
has worked very well in
Ohio under Democratic and
Republican administrations.

Nobody in Ohio has expressed
problems with this.

It's only out-of-state folks
who seem to have trouble with
how to we are implementing the

laws in Ohio.

KAREN KASLER: But the plaintiffs
challenging the state, led
by the AFL-CIO-affiliated A.

Philip Randolph Institute,
say they're doing so on behalf
of Ohioans like Larry Harmon.

The Northeast Ohio man is
featured in a video produced by
the ACLU, another plaintiff in

the case.

Harmon says that after several
years of not voting, he
discovered he'd been removed in

2015.

That was the same year that
many Ohioans who registered
in 2008, when Barack Obama won

the state, also found they had
been erased from the rolls.

The plaintiffs won an appeals
court ruling that resulted in
more than 7,500 ballots cast

by voters who'd been removed
must be counted in the
2016 presidential election.

Last August, the Justice
Department under President Trump
reversed the position it had

taken under President Obama,
and filed a brief to support
the state of Ohio's case.

Seven states use a process
similar to Ohio's, so
potentially millions
of voters around the

country will be affected
by the court's decision.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm
Karen Kasler in Columbus, Ohio.

JEFFREY BROWN: Marcia Coyle
covers the high court for "The
National Law Journal," and

she was in the courtroom,
as always, as the justices
grappled with this
potentially far-reaching

dispute.

Marcia, so, start with the
argument against Ohio's law.

How was it made in court today?

What were they looking -- what
laws were they looking at?

MARCIA COYLE, "The National
Law Journal": OK, really,
there are two laws that are at

the heart of the dispute here,
the National Voter Registration
Act and the Help America

Vote Act, which followed
the national act.

Both were designed and
intended by Congress to make
voting easy and accessible.

The challengers to Ohio's
system represented by Paul Smith
today argued basically the same

argument that they had
won in the lower court.

Ohio is...

JEFFREY BROWN: They were
the winning argument, right?

MARCIA COYLE: Absolutely.

Ohio is going wrong with its
system for removing voters
from its registration rolls.

JEFFREY BROWN: So what
kind of reception did they
get from the justices?

MARCIA COYLE: Well, I would
say the justices seem divided,
but you never can really tell

what's going on until
the decision comes out.

JEFFREY BROWN: To say
that they're divided is
not a surprise, right?

But go ahead.

MARCIA COYLE: That's right.

It's also the safe
prediction, too.

JEFFREY BROWN: Yes.

MARCIA COYLE: Justices Kennedy
and Breyer, for example, they
spoke to the concern that

states have about maintaining
the integrity of voter
registration rolls.

That is something that
states have to do.

Justice Breyer, for example,
said, well, if you can't use
the fact that a voter hasn't

voted in two years to send out
these notices, what can you do?

JEFFREY BROWN: Yes.

So, they're in essence
supporting the Ohio...

(CROSSTALK)

MARCIA COYLE: Well,
it sound that way.

They're raising one of the
major concerns here of Ohio.

And Mr. Smith said, well, Ohio
is really only one of eight
states that uses the process

it uses.

It's the most aggressive.

There are other ways.

I learned through this case
that there is a national
change of address database that

keeps track of changes
of address that are
sent to postal offices.

And he said states can
compare their registration
addresses with that database.

So, there was this concern
about, how can states
maintain integrity?

JEFFREY BROWN: And where
did the challengers
get their support from?

MARCIA COYLE: Justices Sotomayor
and Kagan, for example.

Justice Sotomayor is concerned
about what she said appears
to be the disproportionate

impact of Ohio's process
on cities and neighborhoods
that have a high
percentage of low-income

workers, who work odd shifts,
have difficulty getting to the
polls, and also on minorities.

She pointed out there
have been a number of
new voter restrictions
put in place by states

that create even more obstacles.

Justice Kagan looked at Ohio's
argument that, no, it's not the
trigger, the two-year trigger,

that removes voters.

It's the failure to respond
to our confirmation notice
that removes voters.

She looked at it and said, what
it looks like to me like is,
failure to vote, failure to

respond, failure to vote.

JEFFREY BROWN: Yes.

MARCIA COYLE: And she didn't
quite agree that it was
the cause of the removal,
was the confirmation

notice.

JEFFREY BROWN: So, briefly,
there's a lot on the docket
for the court this year, this

term, over voting rights
and redistricting.

MARCIA COYLE: Yes, there is.

JEFFREY BROWN: But the
implication -- political
implications perhaps of
this particular case?

MARCIA COYLE: Well, as you
probably know, Ohio is often
a battleground state...

JEFFREY BROWN: I do, yes.

MARCIA COYLE: ... in
national elections.

So, the number of voters who
are purged from the rolls could
make a difference in a close

election.

So it's being closely watched.

And you're right.

The court has two partisan
gerrymandering cases.

It may well see another
partisan gerrymandering
case out of North Carolina.

It continues to get racial
gerrymandering cases, voter I.D.

The whole election landscape
is alive right now with
these types of cases.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right,
this is all to be continued.

Marcia Coyle, thank
you, as always.

MARCIA COYLE: My pleasure, Jeff.