American Voters
Supreme Court Pass Monumental Ruling For Voter Integrity
There’s good news for voter integrity advocates. The United States Supreme Court has recently ruled the updated measures that retains voter integrity in Arizona, which bans ballot harvesting and similar practices, as constitutional.
The Republican majority passed integrity measures in early 2021, including the harvesting ban, among others. Following this, several left-leaning groups sued. They also claimed that they are making it hard for “Democrats of color” to vote.
The Supreme court ruled 6-3 that Arizona’s ballot harvesting and out-of-precinct voting bans do not violate the country’s voting rights act.
The court’s opinion was split along partisan lines. Six conservative judges voted to uphold the said state law while three liberal justices voted to do the opposite.
Supreme Court Rules Arizona Law that Retains Voter Integrity Constitutional
This decision rescinds a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals judgment. It also comes within the week that President Joe Biden’s administration filed a lawsuit against the state of Georgia in connection to the said state’s new law promoting electoral integrity. The said lawsuit also claims it is tantamount to “voter suppression.”
Republican Arizona Gov. Brain Kemp described the said suit as “legally and constitutionally dead wrong.”
Writing for the court majority, Justice Samuel Alito said that sitting en banc, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals “misunderstood and misapplied [Section 2] and … exceeded its authority in rejecting the District Court’s factual finding on the issue of legislative intent.”
Additionally, he wrote that Section 2 of the said law bans voting rules resulting “in a denial or abridgment of the right … to vote on account of race or color [or language-minority status],” thus providing the result “is established” if a jurisdiction’s “political processes … are not equally open” to members of such a group “in that [they] have less opportunity … to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.”
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