Myrna Pérez is deputy director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, heading its voting rights and elections work. Jonathan Brater is a counsel in the program. The views expressed are their own.

(CNN) In a disheartening decision, the US Supreme Court upheld Ohio's overly broad voter purge law Monday. The ruling means that eligible voters in the Buckeye State who may have missed a few elections could be kicked off the rolls and potentially find their voices silenced at the polls in November.

Myrna Perez

Jonathan Brater

Pushing people to the sidelines in their democracy is what caused voting rights groups to raise alarm about Ohio's controversial practice in the first place. It's wrong, and it shouldn't be allowed. But this week's ruling in the case of Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute does not give states carte blanche to begin aggressively purging voters. Anyone tempted to treat it as such should think twice.

Currently, Ohio is one of only six states where, if you fail to vote in a federal election, officials can send a mailer to your house saying the state thinks you've moved away. (The other five are Georgia, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.) If you don't respond, and then don't vote or engage in other election activity for two federal elections, you're booted off the registration list.

Anyone who's ever had to (or decided to) miss an election for one reason or another knows you shouldn't infer that someone has moved just because they didn't vote once. Fortunately, Ohio is so far the only state that sends such a mailer after a voter misses just one election cycle.

We opposed this Ohio practice because we believed -- and still do -- that initiating removal from voter lists because someone missed one federal election risks deleting too many eligible voters from registration lists. Even conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote that upholding the legality of Ohio's purge doesn't necessarily mean it's "a wise policy judgment."