Since that decision, contestants of voting restrictions have increasingly resorted to Section 2 of the law, which states that no voting regulations can be imposed that “result in a denial or reduction in the right of any United States citizen to vote by race or color account. “(Unlike a challenge in Section 5, a challenge in Section 2 occurs after the voting rule is applied.)
Now, the court, with its strong conservative-liberal majority of 6-3, will consider the standards that courts will use to determine whether a rule violates Section 2.
Brnovich v. DNC concerns a contest filed by the Democratic National Committee against two provisions of an Arizona law. The first is the requirement that voters in attendance on election day vote in the designated area. Another concerns the so-called “vote collecting law”, which allows only certain people – family members, caretakers, postmen and election officials – to deal with someone else’s completed ballot.
Although several states have versions of both laws, they work differently from state to state. Arizona, for example, has one of the stricter “out-of-district” regulations and has a significant Native American population living on rural reserves without traditional mailing addresses and limited access to mail.
“For that reason, they are more likely to rely on collecting votes to deliver their correspondence,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, of the Brennan Center for Justice.
The provisions “help to ensure the smooth running of the elections and to safeguard the integrity of the process,” said Jason Snead of the Honest Elections Project, a group that has filed a petition in support of Arizona.
“A rule that leaves all voters readily able to vote and simply eliminates a method that some prefer does not restrict anyone’s ability to vote and keeps the voting process equally open,” wrote Wall.
Marc Elias, a DNC lawyer who has handled dozens of cases fighting efforts to block vote counting and change the votes of the Electoral College after the 2020 presidential election, responded that Supreme Court precedents and the law “forced the lower court to conclude that the indiscriminate rejection of ballots made outside the polling zone by Arizona and its criminalization of vote collection violated the Voting Rights Act “.
When the legislature considered the laws, the record was “devoid of any evidence that the fraud did in fact occur,” said Elias.
Subtle change from Biden DOJ
However, the Biden DOJ made it clear that it did not agree with the reasoning behind the Trump administration’s report. This may be the key. This would mean that the DNC could lose the case in question, but prevail in a cascade of similar cases that could reach the court in the coming years.
“Under the Trump administration, the DOJ report suggested a considerable change in the existing law that would cause real damage to the Voting Rights Act,” Justin Levitt, a voting expert at Loyola Law School, said in an interview. He said that the fact that Biden and the DNC did not fully agree should be seen as a good sign.
“This shows a welcome return to normal standards in the DOJ, where high-profile cases once again follow the best view of the law – even when it means that the president’s party loses an electoral case,” said Levitt.
“I think an insurrection that appears to have been led by white nationalists and other extremist groups, which aimed to prevent the election, should serve as a stark reminder of why we still need protections and why we still need to be concerned with the role that race plays in our democracy, “said Morales-Doyle.