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Page Number: 41.0

14 

HUSTED v. A. PHILIP RANDOLPH INSTITUTE 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

firmation notice adds nothing to the State’s understanding 
of whether the voter has moved or not.  And that, I repeat, 
is because a nonreturned confirmation notice (as the num-
bers show) cannot reasonably indicate a change of address. 
  Finally, let us return to §8’s basic mandate and purpose.  
Ohio’s program must “mak[e] a reasonable effort to remove 
the  names  of  ineligible  voters”  from  its  federal  rolls  on 
change-of-residence  grounds. 
  §20507(a)(4)  (emphasis 
added).    Reasonableness  under  §8(a)  is  primarily  meas-
ured  in  terms  of  the  program’s  compliance  with  “subsec-
tions (b), (c), and (d).”  §20507(a)(4)(B).  That includes the 
broad prohibition on removing registrants because of their 
failure to vote.  More generally, the statute seeks to “pro-
tect the integrity of the electoral process” and “ensure that 
accurate  and  current  voter  registration  rolls  are  main-
tained.”  §§20501(b)(3), (4).  Ohio’s system adds to its non-
voting-based  identification  system  a  factor  that  has  no 
tendency to reveal accurately whether the registered voter 
has  changed  residences.    Nothing  plus  one  is  still  one.  
And, if that “one” consists of a failure to vote, then Ohio’s 
program  also  fails  to  make  the  requisite  “reasonable  ef-
fort” to comply with subsection (a)’s statutory mandate.  It 
must violate the statute. 

III 
  The majority tries to find support in two provisions of a 
different  statute,  namely,  the  Help  America  Vote  Act  of 
2002,  116  Stat.  1666,  the  pertinent  part  of  which  is  re-
printed  in  Appendix  B,  infra,  at  25–26.    The  first  is  enti-
tled  “Clarification  of  Ability  of  Election  Officials  To  Re-
move Registrants From Official List of Voters on Grounds 
of  Change  of  Residence.”    §903,  id.,  at  1728.    That  provi-
sion  was  added  to  the  National  Voter  Registration  Act’s 
Failure-to-Vote  Clause,  subsection  (b)(2),  which  says  that 
a  State’s  registrant  removal  program  “shall  not  result  in 
the removal of the name of any person from the official list