It is an important day for voting rights, as US Supreme Court justices today will consider whether to maintain two Republican-backed voting restrictions in Arizona, in a case that could further weaken the Voting Rights Act, a law 1965 historic federal ban prohibiting racial discrimination in voting.
The major voting rights case comes to the judges at a time when Republicans in several states are seeking new restrictions after former President Donald Trump made false allegations of widespread fraud in the November 3 election he lost to Joe Biden.
Andrew Chung and Lawrence Hurley report to Reuters that judges will hear arguments on appeals from Arizona Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich and the state Republican Party for a lower court decision that concluded that the voting restrictions in question disproportionately burdened voters. black, Hispanic and Native American voters.
One of the measures considered it a crime to provide someone else’s early ballot to election officials, with the exception of family members or caregivers. The other disqualified ballots issued personally in an electoral district other than the one to which the voter was assigned.
Community activists sometimes get involved in collecting votes to facilitate voting and increase electoral participation. The practice, which critics call “polling,” is legal in most states, with varying limitations. Voting rights advocates said voters sometimes inadvertently vote in the wrong constituency, with the designated polling place sometimes not the closest to the voter’s home.
A broad ruling by the high court, whose conservative 6-3 majority includes three Trump-appointed judges, endorsing the restrictions could undermine the Voting Rights Act, making it more difficult to prove violations. Such a decision could impact the mid-term elections of 2022, in which Republicans are trying to regain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
The decision is expected to take place by the end of June.
At issue in Arizona’s case is Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits any rule that results in discrimination of voting “on the basis of race or color”. This provision has been the main tool used to show that voting restrictions discriminate against minorities since the court in 2013 destroyed another section of the law that determined which states with a history of racial discrimination needed federal approval to change voting laws.
The US Circuit’s 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco last year, concluded that Arizona’s restrictions violated the Voting Rights Act, although they remained in effect for the November 3 election. The 9th Circuit also found that “false racial allegations of fraud in collecting votes” were used to convince Arizona lawmakers to enact this restriction with discriminatory intent, violating the US Constitution’s prohibition on denying the right to vote based on race .