WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court starts a legal dispute on Tuesday over the right to vote on the Arizona state battlefield, and the outcome could affect how the country’s courts resolve disputes over electoral laws in dozens of other states.
The case will also be a test case for one of the most important civil rights laws – the Voting Rights Act, which the Supreme Court significantly reduced in 2013.
Two Arizona laws are at issue in virtual oral allegations before judges. One requires election officials to reject ballots thrown in the wrong places. The other concerns voting by mail and provides that only the voter, a family member or a caregiver can collect and deliver the completed ballot.
“Prohibiting the unlimited collection of third party votes is a common sense means of protecting the secret vote,” the state told judges in court cases. The rule outside the polling zone is intended to prevent multiple voting, Arizona said.
But Arizona Democrats said the state has a history of changing polling places more frequently in minority neighborhoods and placing polls in places designed to make mistakes. Minorities move more often and are less likely to own houses, resulting in the need to change polling places, Democrats said.
Arizona far surpasses other states in disposing of ballots outside the electoral zone, rejecting 11 times more than the next state with the highest rate. And minority voters are more likely to need help delivering their ballots, opponents said. In many states where the practice is legal, community activists offer to collect ballots to encourage voting.
A federal judge in Arizona dismissed the challenges. But the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, so the state appealed to the Supreme Court.
In the past, the Voting Rights Act required states with a history of discrimination to obtain permission from the courts or the Department of Justice before changing electoral procedures. The test was whether a change would make minority voters worse off. But in 2013 the Supreme Court lifted the pre-compensation requirement, ruling that Congress failed to properly update the formula to determine which states should be covered.
According to what remains of the law, the 9th Circuit said, state electoral provisions can be blocked if they disproportionately affect the ability of a racial minority to participate in the electoral process and elect candidates of their choice and if the state has a history of discrimination against voters in that minority group. He concluded that the two Arizona laws failed the legal tests.
But lower courts disagree on how to determine whether a change in voting practice violates the law.
Arizona Republicans say the test should require proof that a contested law causes a substantial disparity in opportunities for minority voters to participate in the election, not just an incremental burden. For example, the state says that when considering challenging a law that closes the polls half an hour earlier, courts should consider the electoral system as a whole and examine other voting opportunities, such as postal voting or early voting.
But Arizona Democrats say the law does not require proof of a “substantial disparity” and that there is no requirement to serve a minimal percentage of affected minority voters to successfully challenge a change in voting rules.
The test advocated by Arizona, the American Civil Liberties Union argued in a court-friendly report, it would impose “a categorical approach under which laws that are relatively common, or that do not make voting entirely impossible, are largely immune from liability”.
But Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and other Republicans said that the Democrats’ interpretation of the law would jeopardize any neutral voting law if it results in an unequal opportunity to vote whenever “an opponent identifies a minimal statistical racial disparity related to the law – and then points to an odious, completely separate, long-standing vote discrimination. “
The Supreme Court will issue its decision in the summer.
