By Meg Cunningham and Kendall Karson in ABC News:

Wisconsin, Georgia and Ohio have become the battleground for voting access issues as an onslaught of roll purges and absentee ballot qualifications are poised to be an issue for voters in the 2020 election cycle.

Voter registration rolls are often a point of contention and a target for frequent changes, something voting-rights groups argue is an attempt to whittle down members of some groups who tend to vote Democratic.

A new report from the Brennan Center found that between 2016 and 2018, counties with a history of voter discrimination purged voters from rolls at much higher rates than other counties.

The study found 17 million voters were purged nationwide between 2016 and 2018. Another 16 million were purged between 2014 and 2016, according to a separate study from the center.

“Out-of-date rolls are just easy targets for folks who don’t actually care at all about voters, but want to do anti-voter initiatives and to have some cover,” Myrna Pérez, Director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program, told ABC News.

Mass voter roll clean-outs began in 2013 after the Supreme Court ruled on Shelby County v. Holder, which rolled back many voter protections that were included in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Before the high court’s decision, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act required jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to submit proposed changes in voting procedures to the Department of Justice or a federal court for approval.

Read the full article in ABC News through this link.