Divided Supreme Court may allow Ohio voter purge policy

Conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices were joined by liberal Stephen Breyer on Wednesday in signaling sympathy toward Ohio’s policy of purging infrequent voters from registration rolls — a practice critics say disenfranchises thousands of people — in a pivotal voting rights case. The nine justices heard about an hour of arguments in Republican-governed Ohio’s appeal of a lower court ruling that found that the policy violated a federal law aimed at making it easier for Americans to register to vote. Indicating he potentially could join the court’s conservatives in a ruling upholding Ohio’s policy as lawful, Breyer noted that a state needs tools to clean up its voter rolls.