Hoo boy. SCOTUS splits 6-3 to allow Arizona voting restrictions

[pdq]

Right down the liberal/conservative line, reversing a 7-4 federal Court of Appeals ruling.

NYT:

The new case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, No. 19-1257, concerned two kinds of voting restrictions in Arizona. One required election officials to discard ballots cast at the wrong precinct. The other made it a crime for campaign workers, community activists and most other people to collect ballots for delivery to polling places, a practice critics call “ballot harvesting.” The law made exceptions for family members, caregivers and election officials.

Drop your perfectly-completed ballot at the wrong precinct? Bzzzt! No vote for you, even in state-wide races where precinct is irrelevant.

Give it to someone who will make sure it gets to the right precinct? Even worse. Jail time.

Give up if you’re poor and have to move a lot and you’re unsure of your precinct or whether voting is worth it? Hey, that’s a feature, not a bug.

As pointed out by the majority at the Appeals level:

Judge Fletcher added that “there is no evidence of any fraud in the long history of third-party ballot collection in Arizona.”

So what? said the Reagan (really!) appointee in the minority opinion:

“Arizona [is] free to enact prophylactic measures even though no evidence of actual voter fraud was before the legislature.”

This stands the VRA on it’s head.

[Acer]

Better not let anyone who's voted for a Democrat vote, because they are closer to socialists than the Republicans. Just a prophylactic, mind you.

[cbelt3]

Thus does democracy die.

DAMMIT.

[S. Pupp]

Next up: disenfranchisement of minorities, woman, and people who do not own land. That is, after all, what the almighty Founding Fathers intended.

[wave rider]

For the people and John Lewis voting acts are more important than ever now.

[vision63]

wave rider wrote:
For the people and John Lewis voting acts are more important than ever now.

We need to prepare as if that isn't going to happen.

[mattkime]

Two things make me furious and depressed -

Voting restrictions can be enacted to solve imagined problems.

Disproportionate impact on minorities doesn’t matter.







Welp, Republicans have exactly what they want.

[Buzz]

If this isn’t a cry for National Voting Reform, I can’t imagine what could be a louder cry.
==

[Acer]

Sorry libs, but in America 2021, the theoretical problem of voting fraud that has never happened with any significance here can be preemptively addressed. But the very real problem of minority voter disenfranchisement that was in place for the first two centuries of this Republic, give or take a decade or three, cannot.

[RAMd®d]

I hope this ruling didn't genuinely surprise anybody.

Disappoint, absolutely.

It may happen that SCOTUS finds some state's anti-voting law(s) to be reprehensible and strike them down.

Maybe, I suppose it could happen.

That would be a surprise, to me.

That every state's anti-voting law(s) get upheld by/in SCOTUS will not surprise me.