Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-980_f2q3.pdf
Page Number: 40.0

Cite as:  584 U. S. ____ (2018) 

13 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

those  1.5  million  notices,  Ohio  only  received  back  about 
60,000 return cards (or 4%) which said, in effect, “You are 
right,  Ohio.    I  have,  in  fact,  moved.”    Ibid.    In  addition, 
Ohio received back about 235,000 return cards which said, 
in effect, “You are wrong, Ohio, I have not moved.”  In the 
end, however, there were more than 1,000,000 notices—the 
vast majority of notices sent—to which Ohio received back 
no return card at all.  Ibid. 
  What  about  those  registered  voters—more  than  1  mil-
lion strong—who did not send back their return cards?  Is 
there any reason at all (other than their failure to vote) to 
think  they  moved?    The  answer  to  this  question  must  be 
no.  There is no reason at all.  First, those 1 million or so 
voters  accounted  for  about  13%  of  Ohio’s  voting  popula-
tion.  So if those 1 million or so registered voters (or even 
half of them) had, in fact, moved, then vastly more people 
must move each year in Ohio than is generally true of the 
roughly 4% of all Americans who move to a different county 
nationwide  (not  all  of  whom  are  registered  voters).    See 
Id.,  at  376.    But  there  is  no  reason  to  think  this.    Ohio 
offers no such reason.  And the streets of Ohio’s cities are 
not filled with moving vans; nor has Cleveland become the 
Nation’s  residential  moving  companies’  headquarters.  
Thus,  I  think  it  fair  to  assume  (because  of  the  human 
tendency  not  to  send  back  cards  received  in  the  mail, 
confirmed  strongly  by  the  actual  numbers  in  this  record) 
the following: In respect to change of residence, the failure 
of more than 1 million Ohio voters to respond to forward- 
able notices (the vast majority of those sent) shows nothing 
at all that is statutorily significant. 
  To  put  the  matter  in  the  present  statutory  context: 
When  a  State  relies  upon  a  registrant’s  failure  to  vote  to 
initiate the Confirmation Procedure, it violates the Failure-
to-Vote  Clause,  and  a  State’s  subsequent  use  of  the  Con-
firmation Procedure cannot save the State’s program from 
that defect.  Even if that were not so, a nonreturned con-