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Page Number: 17.0

14 

HUSTED v. A. PHILIP RANDOLPH INSTITUTE 

Opinion of the Court 

respondents, HAVA would be like a law that contains one 
provision  making  it  illegal  to  drive  with  a  blood  alcohol 
level  of  0.08  or  higher  and  another  provision  making  it 
illegal to drive with a blood alcohol level of 0.10 or higher.  
The  second  provision  would  not  only  be  redundant;  it 
would be confusing and downright silly. 
  Our reading, on the other hand, gives the new language 
added  to the  Failure-to-Vote  Clause “real  and substantial 
effect.”  Husky Int’l Electronics, Inc. v. Ritz, 578 U. S. ___, 
___  (2016)  (slip  op.,  at  4)  (internal  quotation  marks  omit-
ted).    It  clarifies  the  meaning  of  the  prohibition  against 
removal  by  reason  of  nonvoting,  a  matter  that  troubled 
some  States  prior  to  HAVA’s  enactment.    See,  e.g.,  FEC 
Report on the NVRA to the 106th Congress 19 (1999). 
  Respondents  and  the  dissent  separately  claim  that  the 
Failure-to-Vote  Clause  must  be  read  to  bar  the  use  of 
nonvoting  as  a  trigger  for  sending  return  cards  because 
otherwise it would be “superfluous.”  Post, at 17 (opinion of 
BREYER, J.); see Brief for Respondents 29.  After all, sub-
section  (d)  already  prohibits  States  from  removing  regis-
trants because of a failure to vote alone.  See §20507(d)(1).  
To  have  meaning  independent  of  subsection  (d),  respond-
ents  reason,  the  Failure-to-Vote  Clause  must  prohibit 
other  uses  of  the  failure  to  vote,  including  its  use  as  a 
trigger for sending out notices. 
  This  argument  is  flawed  because  the  Failure-to-Vote 
Clause has plenty of work to do under our reading.  Most 
important,  it  prohibits  the  once-common  state  practice  of 
removing  registered  voters  simply  because  they  failed  to 
vote  for  some  period  of  time. 
  Not  too  long  ago, 
“[c]ancellation for failure to vote [was] the principal means 
used  . . .  to  purge  the  [voter]  lists.”    Harris,  Model  Voter 
Registration System, at 44.  States did not use a person’s 
failure  to  vote  as  evidence  that  the  person  had  died  or 
moved  but  as  an  independent  ground  for  removal.    See