Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

In Arizona election rules case, Supreme Court mulls what's left of Voting Rights Act

Arizona voters

An Arizona law disqualifies ballots cast at the wrong polling place. It's impact is felt most strongly by minority communities.

Christian Petersen/Getty Images

The Supreme Court on Tuesday will take up its most consequential case since the election about the future of a functional and fair democracy.

Hanging in the balance are the most meaningful remaining voting rights protections for minority groups under federal law. But even if the justices don't make a sweeping ruling upholding or eliminating those, their decision in a dispute over election restrictions in battleground Arizona will shape the fate of similar rules across the country.

Arizona disallows ballots cast at the wrong precinct and also bars so-called ballot harvesting, the term for campaign operatives or community activists collecting and delivering others' sealed vote envelopes. Last year a federal appeals court ruled that both laws violate the Voting Rights Act because they disproportionately disadvantage Black, Latino and Native American voters.


No decision from the high court is likely before June, and oral arguments like those set for a Tuesday teleconference do not always produce reliable clues about the justices' views of the case.

But the court's decisive 6-3 conservative majority combined with its landmark decision eight years ago effectively gutting the most powerful aspect of the voting rights law — which made places with histories of racial discrimination get Washington's "preclreraance," or permission, before setting new election rules — has civil rights groups and Democratic politicians very worried about the outcome.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Moreover, the case is being argued as Republican-majority legislatures across the country consider as many as 150 bills to make access to the polls more difficult than last year. A broad ruling upholding Arizona's rules would make it more difficult to challenge any measures that get enacted.

"It would be taking away one of the big tools, in fact, the main tool we have left now, to protect voters against racial discrimination," Myrna Perez of the progressive Brennan Center for Justice told the Associated Press.

At issue is the part of the Voting Rights Act that creates two separate protections against racial bias in election rules.

One provision is known as the "intent test." It says state or local election regulations must be struck down if plaintiffs in a lawsuit show the provisions were enacted for the purpose of making it harder for people of a certain race to vote. This protection was significantly weakened when the Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that lawmakers must be given "the presumption of legislative good faith," significantly raising the bar for proving any racist intent.

The fallback provision is called the "results test." It says states may not maintain any law that "results in a denial or abridgement" of the right to vote "on account of race or color." In other words, even when a statute is written without any discriminatory motive, it can still be tossed if the courts conclude it has a disproportionate impact on voters of color.

That was the test that Arizona's two laws failed, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decided 7-4 in January 2020.

In the 2016 presidential election, the first after the law took effect, Black, Latino and Native American voters were twice as likely as white people to cast ballots in the wrong precinct, Judge William Fletcher wrote for the majority, thanks to "frequent changes in polling locations; confusing placement of polling locations; and high rates of residential mobility."

And the ban on ballot harvesting also has an outsize effect on minority voters, he said, because they are more likely to have trouble getting to the polls because of their poverty or disability — or to rely on mail service when they live on remote reservations.

Arizona's Republican attorney general, Mark Brnovich, argues the ruling applied the results test much too assertively, and that if the high court agrees then similar laws around the country will fall and the integrity of elections will be imperiled.

If a majority of justices agree, their choice will be to delineate a tougher legal standard for failing the results test — or effectively jettison it altogether. Brnovich has proposed a complex new standard for administering the results test that would appear to make its application all but impossible.

The Biden administration has disappointed some civil rights advocates by deciding not to formally intervene. Instead the Justice Department told the court two weeks ago that, while it does not support tougher standards for proving discriminatory results from election laws, it also does not think Arizona's provisions fail the current test.

If the court sees things the same way, it could uphold Arizona's rules without making big changes to voting discrimination law.

Arizona had been one of nine states where all election laws were subject to federal oversight under the Voting Rights Act until 2013, when the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder effectively scrapped the preclearance system. It would be revived under legislation the Democratic-majority House is on course to pass this year — and that bill's language could be amended before the vote to reverse any weakening of the law by the court in the Arizona case.

But, either way, the measure would surely be consigned to limbo in the Senate so long as the legislative filibuster stays in place, because almost all 50 Republicans oppose it.

As many as one in 10 voters in most elections cast their votes in a precinct where they don't live, the National Conference of State Legislatures estimates, and generally the mistake involves ignorance of neighborhood political geography and goes unnoticed. But when such votes are challenged, Arizona is one of more than a dozen states mandating the entire ballot be thrown out — negating not only votes in local contests such as for city council and school board but also for statewide offices, Congress and president.

Arizona is also among the 10 states that make it a crime for people other than family members or caregivers to act as the third-party courier for an absentee ballot. Half the states make that widely permissible, and the rest have no state laws on the matter.

The results of the case will have an impact not only on minority voting rights but on the balance of partisan power, because any new permissiveness for laws with racially discriminatory consequences could cut down on the Democratic vote. President Biden won last fall with the support of 87 percent of Black voters, 65 percent of Latino voters, 61 percent of Asian voters, and 55 percent of other nonwhite voters.

The challenged Arizona provisions remained in effect last fall because the case was on appeal. still making its way through the courts. Biden still narrowly carried the state, the first Democrat to do so since 1996.

Read More

Dictionary definition of tariff
Would replacing the income tax with higher tariffs help ‘struggling Americans’?
Devonyu/Getty Images

Could Trump’s tariffs have unintended consequences that hurt America?

The first few weeks of the Trump administration have been head-spinning. President Trump and his team were well-prepared to launch their policy agenda, signing over 50 executive orders, the most in a president's first month in more than 40 years. A major focus has been economic policy, first with immigration raids, which were quickly followed by announcements of tariffs on imports from America’s biggest trade partners.

The tariff announcements have followed a meandering and confusing course. President Trump announced the first tariffs on February 1, but within 24 hours, he suspended the tariffs on Mexico and Canada in favor of “negotiations.” Mexico and Canada agreed to enforce their borders better to stop migrants and fentanyl imports, which the Trump administration called a victory. Despite the triumphalist rhetoric, the enforcement measures were substantially the same as what both countries were already planning to do.

Keep ReadingShow less
When Power Protects Predators: How U.S. Rape Culture Silences Survivors

Individuals protesting.

Gabrielle Chalk

When Power Protects Predators: How U.S. Rape Culture Silences Survivors

On November 5, 2024—the night of the most anticipated election cycle for residents of the United States—thousands gathered around the country, sitting with friends in front of large-screen TVs, optimistic and ready to witness the election of the next president of the United States.

As the hours of election night stretched on and digital state maps turned red or blue with each counted ballot, every 68 seconds a woman was sexually assaulted in the U.S., an estimate calculated by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN).

Keep ReadingShow less
Where is Ted Cruz When American Democracy Needs Him?

Senator Ted Cruz.

Sergio Flores/Getty Images

Where is Ted Cruz When American Democracy Needs Him?

The president is ignoring the law when he isn’t intentionally violating it. He is dissolving federal agencies created by Congress and impounding funds even though that is clearly prohibited. He is governing by issuing executive orders and even claims the power to roll back birthright citizenship, ignoring the Constitution itself.

All of this and an unelected oligarch given free rein by the president to ransack government departments and threaten civil servants. If Americans weren’t living it, it would be hard to believe that this could be happening in a nation founded on principles of limited government, separation of powers, and checks and balances.

Keep ReadingShow less
The Republican Party Can Build A Winning Coalition With Independents

People voting at a polling booth.

Getty Images//Rawpixel

The Republican Party Can Build A Winning Coalition With Independents

The results of the 2024 election should put to bed any doubts as to the power of independent voters to decide key elections. Independents accounted for 34% of voters in 2024, handing President Trump the margin of victory in every swing state race and making him only the second Republican to win the popular vote since 1988. The question now is whether Republicans will build bridges with independent voters and cement a generational winning coalition or squander the opportunity like the Democrats did with the independent-centric Obama coalition.

Almost as many independents came out to vote this past November as Republicans, more than the 31% of voters who said they were Democrats, and just slightly below the 35% of voters who said they were Republicans. In 2020, independents cast just 26% of the ballots nationwide. The President’s share of the independent vote went up 5% compared to the 2020 election when he lost the independent vote to former President Biden by a wide margin. It’s no coincidence that many of the key demographics that President Trump made gains with this election season—Latinos, Asians and African Americans—are also seeing historic levels of independent voter registration.

Keep ReadingShow less