In an ideological split of 6 to 3, the Supreme Court today granted the blazing-red, conservative state of Arizona the okay it sought to build inconvenience into the voting process for people of color. Maybe Arizona isn't actually admitting its goal in making the state's voting laws more restrictive today than they were in 2020, but that is the effect.
The ACLU writes, "The case itself challenged two voting barriers under Arizona law – limitations on ballot collection and out-of-precinct voting – and whether those provisions violated Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act by denying or abridging the right to vote in a manner that was racially discriminatory." Arizona's new law disqualifies ballots that are completed in the wrong precinct, and it forbids people from collecting absentee ballots from voters and turning them in on the voters' behalf.
As Justice Alito put it in his opinion for the majority, "Equal openness [i.e. the ability to vote] remains the touchstone," adding that "Mere inconvenience cannot be enough to demonstrate a violation of [Section 2]." Does it matter if the inconvenience falls on people of color? Not to these justices.
“Every voting rule imposes a burden of some sort. Voting takes time and, for almost everyone, some travel, even if only to a nearby mailbox," Alito wrote.
The three liberal judges joined the dissenting opinion by Justice Kagan. “What is tragic here is that the Court has (yet again) rewritten—in order to weaken—a statute that stands as a monument to America’s greatness, and protects against its basest impulses,” Kagan wrote.
And President Biden? In a statement, he wrote that he was "deeply disappointed" in the Supreme Court's decision. "After all we have been through to deliver the promise of this Nation to all Americans, we should be fully enforcing voting rights laws, not weakening them."
We don't know how we can add to that, except to say that it's a travesty of a ruling that fails to serve democracy.
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What do you think -- or feel -- about this decision?
Is this worse than the 2013 Shelby decision? (Shelby knocked down the requirement that, in states with a history of discriminatory voting practices, proposed changes in voting law had to be vetted before they were made into law.)
Do you think that Biden should add more justices to the Supreme Court? He has said he doesn't intend to, but -- should he?
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/supreme-court-upholds-arizona-restrictions-major-voting-rights/story?id=78182724&fbclid=IwAR23WTiLjDcATXSpBj4EGnkvrYeC6Gwr5daL-iFmpP9Z9TntM7Sgefa68SQ
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/01/supreme-court-arizona-voting-rights-decision-497518?fbclid=IwAR1pzfrE22cglTY1blbyUv_4mfePNjhKSBfZse00EhVRBZ6xlz7TiVqNqOw
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