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U.S. Supreme Court set to weigh Republican-backed voting restrictions


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U.S. Supreme Court set to weigh Republican-backed voting restrictions

By Andrew Chung

 

2021-02-24T113208Z_1_LYNXMPEH1N0PN_RTROPTP_4_USA-COURT-BALLOTS.JPG

FILE PHOTO: A police officer is seen in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, U.S., April 15, 2020. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo

 

(Reuters) - Fresh off an election in which former President Donald Trump made false claims of fraud, the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to ponder the legality of a restriction on early voting in Arizona that his fellow Republicans argued was needed to combat fraud.

 

The Republican-backed law, spurred in part by a video purportedly showing voter fraud that courts later deemed misleading, made it a crime to provide another person's completed early ballot to election officials, with the exception of family members or caregivers.

 

Community activists sometimes engage in ballot collection to facilitate voting and increase voter turnout. Ballot collection is legal in most states, with varying limitations. Republican critics call the practice "ballot harvesting."

 

Supreme Court arguments over the 2016 ban and another Arizona voting restriction - both ruled unlawful by a lower court - are scheduled for next Tuesday, with a decision due by the end of June. A broad ruling by high court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, endorsing the restrictions could further weaken the Voting Rights Act, a landmark 1965 federal law that barred racial discrimination in voting, by making it harder to prove violations.

 

The video, taken from security camera footage, shows a man carrying a box of ballots into a Maricopa County Elections Department office. It was posted on a blog in 2014 by A.J. LaFaro, the Republican Party chairman at the time in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix.

 

LaFaro's post questioned whether the man was a U.S. citizen and called him a "violent thug" who was "stuffing the ballot box as I watched in amazement." A judge later called the blog post "racially charged" and concluded that the footage showed no illegal activity. The man seen in the video filed an unsuccessful defamation suit against LaFaro.

 

Republican-governed states including Arizona have imposed a variety of voting restrictions in recent years. In the aftermath of Trump's baseless claims of fraud, further curbs on voting are being pursued in 33 states following his Nov. 3 loss to Democrat Joe Biden in an election that drew record turnout, according to New York University School of Law's Brennan Center for Justice.

 

'THE MAIN TOOL'

At issue in the Supreme Court case is the Voting Rights Act's Section 2, which bans any rule that results in voting discrimination "on account of race or color." The court in 2013 gutted another section of the statute that determined which states with a history of racial discrimination needed federal approval to change voting laws.

 

Weakening Section 2 would eliminate "the main tool we have left now to protect voters against racial discrimination," said Myrna Pérez, director of the Brennan Center's Voting Rights and Elections Program.

 

"If there's one thing that the election and the insurrection showed it's that not everyone buys into the idea of free, fair and accessible elections," Pérez added, referring to a pro-Trump mob's Jan. 6 rampage at the U.S. Capitol.

 

The Supreme Court case also involves a longstanding Arizona policy that discards ballots cast in-person at a precinct other than the one to which a voter has been assigned. In some places, voters' precincts are not the closest one to their home.

 

The case pits Arizona's Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich and the Arizona Republican Party against the Democratic National Committee and the Arizona Democratic Party, which sued over the restrictions. Arizona's Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs has backed the challenge.

 

The two sides differ sharply over whether genuine voter fraud must be documented to justify ballot restrictions.

 

"The notion that voter fraud must be proved in order to enact regulations of elections is not established in the law," said Republican election lawyer Jason Torchinsky, who filed a brief backing Brnovich. "There are tons of areas where legislatures legislate without proving that some kind of fraud or crime has occurred."

 

Jessica Ring Amunson, an attorney who represents Hobbs, said courts should take false fraud claims into account when evaluating the legality of voting restrictions.

 

Legislatures often justify such restrictions as necessary to tackle fraud and increase voter confidence, but "simultaneously they're spreading baseless claims of voter fraud when none exists, and that is the very thing that is leading to people losing confidence in elections," she added.

 

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year found Arizona's restrictions unlawful, though they remained in effect for the Nov. 3 election. It ruled that the restrictions disproportionately burdened Black, Hispanic and Native American voters and violated the Voting Rights Act.

 

The 9th Circuit also found that "false, race-based claims of ballot collection fraud" were used to convince Arizona legislators to enact that restriction with discriminatory intent, violating the U.S. Constitution's prohibition on denying voting rights based on race.

 

U.S. District Judge Douglas Rayes in 2018 faulted Arizona's legislature for its "misinformed belief that ballot collection fraud was occurring," but upheld the voting restrictions. The 9th Circuit last year overturned that ruling.

 

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)

 

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-- © Copyright Reuters 2021-02-25
 
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10 minutes ago, placeholder said:

eliminate the practice of allowing candidates or party workers to pick up and deliver absentee ballots. 

After reading the thread, I think some of you can agree one a few things possibly. Including the need for more transparency along with disallowing parties/candidates to solely handle the votes alone.

 

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A post with a link to the BKK post has been removed.  We are not allowed to post from the Bangkok Post.  That's their rule, not ours.

 

Edit:  Please note, this topic is NOT about Thai elections. 

 

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On 2/24/2021 at 9:52 PM, Roadman said:

In a country where slavery was the status quo and blacks being only worth 3/5ths of a whitey is the status quo then being conservative is pure straight out racism against black Americans.

 

When the Republicans call themselves the party that freed the slaves bear in mind they are the ones who came up with this 3/5ths nonsense and all the ugly discrimination measures afterwards, so heinous in that they were secondary to only slavery itself.  They should have just set the people free and let them figure out a way to make a life for themselves, like the European immigrants who were arriving in the US with only the clothes on their backs.

 

That Clarence Thomas, something's wrong with that guy...

 

 

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1 hour ago, Thomas J said:

This should be pretty simple but it is not.  In many states you don't have to show any ID in order to vote.  In others you do.  Given that voting into office is one of the most important actions a citizen can perform it seems only reasonable that a person be 1. Required to be registered  2. Be required to show up at the polls in order to vote 3. Present ID proving the identity of the person voting establishing that the voter is really the registered person.  There is no reason in today's world that ID cards can not be provided at no cost to people.  

With mail in voting, I can not envision a system that is more vulnerable to fraud.  You have the IRS who sent more than 1 million covid relief checks to dead people let alone the number that went to those not eligible yet we are to believe that somehow the state governments sent mail in ballots ONLY TO ELIGIBLE VOTERS.  Next, there is no way of establishing that the person who returned the ballot was actually the registered voter.  There are some handwriting comparison programs but they are far from foolproof.  Lastly, there is no way of establishing that even if the person validly received the ballot and returned the ballot that there was not some inducement to vote for or against a specific candidate.  It would be far to easy for an organized group to submit and receive ballots on behalf of other people and then coerce them with cigarettes, liquor, money or drugs.  Does this happen?  Who knows?  But you can not board an airline, cash a check, buy alcohol, apply for social security, apply for food stamps, apply for welfare, apply for a mortgage, buy a car, purchase a gun, adopt a pet, get a hunting license, pick up a prescription, purchase certain cold tablets, or give blood without being physically present and showing ID.  If these are "so important" and cause concern about them fraudulently being done without ID, what could make anyone think that those were subject to fraud but voting is not. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/getting-a-photo-id-so-you-can-vote-is-easy-unless-youre-poor-black-latino-or-elderly/2016/05/23/8d5474ec-20f0-11e6-8690-f14ca9de2972_story.html

What do you mean by ID? A picture ID? 

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21 hours ago, Thomas J said:

This should be pretty simple but it is not.  In many states you don't have to show any ID in order to vote.  In others you do.  Given that voting into office is one of the most important actions a citizen can perform it seems only reasonable that a person be 1. Required to be registered  2. Be required to show up at the polls in order to vote 3. Present ID proving the identity of the person voting establishing that the voter is really the registered person.  There is no reason in today's world that ID cards can not be provided at no cost to people.  

With mail in voting, I can not envision a system that is more vulnerable to fraud.  You have the IRS who sent more than 1 million covid relief checks to dead people let alone the number that went to those not eligible yet we are to believe that somehow the state governments sent mail in ballots ONLY TO ELIGIBLE VOTERS.  Next, there is no way of establishing that the person who returned the ballot was actually the registered voter.  There are some handwriting comparison programs but they are far from foolproof.  Lastly, there is no way of establishing that even if the person validly received the ballot and returned the ballot that there was not some inducement to vote for or against a specific candidate.  It would be far to easy for an organized group to submit and receive ballots on behalf of other people and then coerce them with cigarettes, liquor, money or drugs.  Does this happen?  Who knows?  But you can not board an airline, cash a check, buy alcohol, apply for social security, apply for food stamps, apply for welfare, apply for a mortgage, buy a car, purchase a gun, adopt a pet, get a hunting license, pick up a prescription, purchase certain cold tablets, or give blood without being physically present and showing ID.  If these are "so important" and cause concern about them fraudulently being done without ID, what could make anyone think that those were subject to fraud but voting is not. 

Although I might disagree with you regarding mail-in voting, I'd be willing to go along with your rules for voting if you would also agree to the following:

 

1- Make getting an ID and registering to vote easy.  In other words, let's not put roadblocks up to keep people from getting ID's and registering.  Don't have an office open just a few hours per month (during people's work hours, when they can't get out), and make people drive many miles to get there.  Make it easy and fair for ALL to get their ID's.  Set up a federal program to get all Americans signed up, and get them all national/state ID's.

 

2- Make voting itself fair and easy too.  No one should have to wait more than one hour to vote.  There should be enough days to vote (including weekends) so that those who cannot get out of work (ie, the low-wage earners) have opportunities to vote on their days off.  No one should have to travel more than 10 miles to vote.  No one should have to jump through hoops to vote when they get there.  

 

Make in-person voting and getting proper ID convenient and fair, and I'm willing to give up mail-in voting for now.  Though I'm sure you want those in the military to be able to vote by mail. And I'm sure you've got some fool-proof system to guarantee that THEIR ballots aren't fraudulent, right?  

 

And once we get this all resolved, let's deal with gerrymandering.  And THEN let's come up with a system we can all agree on that works in terms of mail-in voting (like it does in Oregon, and at least 10 European countries).  

 

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that voting restrictions being presented by Republicans are designed to limit votes that would be cast by those who most likely would vote Democratic.  Yes, you might argue that many of the rules presented by Democrats would bring out more Democratic votes, but there's a huge difference between trying to include more people via legislation as opposed to trying to exclude people via legislation.  Especially when you consider the history of Americans trying to keep Black people from receiving the rights of all other Americans.  

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30 minutes ago, mtraveler said:

 

1- Make getting an ID and registering to vote easy

Thank you for the civil response.  In terms of making ID and registering easy, I agree with you and certainly the government can and should provide State ID cards with pictures at no cost for those who don't have a drivers license.  However, I disagree with you regarding mail in votes.  Those "were intended" for people who legitimately were out of their voting districts at the time of the election or were incapacitated in some fashion.  

You would not allow "mail in" identification to buy alcohol online.  You would not think of allowing "mail in" verification for pre-boarding an airplane. You would not allow "mail in" documentation to purchase a firearm.  Yet in the USA numerous states Illinois being one of them, you do not have to show any form of ID in order to vote even if you show up in person.  If you know the persons name and the precinct they are registered in, anyone can show up and vote on their behalf.  

I can tell you, I opened a brokerage account online.  In order to get approved I had to present ID to a Notary Public and mail in copies of my passport, and drivers license along with that notary statement attesting to my identity.  I then had to video conference with the brokerage house holding my passport next to my face at the same time so they could record it. 

Some states allow voter harvesting where people can go out and collect mail in ballots.  All of those run counter to not having a voter be influenced.  I see no one complain when a hotel, rental car, bank, insurance company, immigration, drivers license bureau etc ask for ID yet somehow the idea that voting does not require the same degree of due diligence I find strange. 

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8 hours ago, Thomas J said:

It is not nonsense.  It proves how inept the government is.  If they can't determine if you are alive or dead do you really believe they would accurately tell if voters are legitimate or not.

In terms of voting restrictions.  No I am not for taking away peoples right to vote.  However, if it is deemed so mandatory that a person SHOW UP IN PERSON AND PRESENT ID in order to buy alcohol, cigarettes, or open a cell phone account.  It is ludicrous to just say that the same is not required to vote. A much more critical function. 

As has been shown repeatedly, state governments where Republicans are in control make it difficult for those segments of the population who would be more likely to vote Democratic. For instance, in Texas, a hunting license is considered adequate ID but not a student ID from a state University. Also, Texas refuses to offer extended hours at its motor vehicle depts to allow working people who don't have cars to get a state ID. And also make people who live in poorer parts of the state travel longer distances to get to motor vehicle centers.

In addition, in the past, 5 states where Republicans had the governorship and both statehouse conducted intensive investigations looking for voter fraud. They found virtually nothing.

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