SCOTUS picks up voting case.. Ballot harvesting and racism and more

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The Supreme Court in early March will hear arguments in a voting rights case pitting Republican arguments about election integrity against Democratic claims of racial discrimination.

The first is a requirement that a ballot be thrown out if it was cast in a precinct other than the one matching the voter’s home address. The second is a ban on “ballot harvesting,” a practice in which third-party carriers collect absentee ballots and deliver them for counting.

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An Arizona district court ruled in favor of the Republican arguments. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year reversed that decision, pointing out that it appeared as though both policies had resulted in lower turnout among minorities. The court accused state officials of locating approved precincts “counterintuitively” so that minority voters might easily make mistakes. It also observed that since about 80% of Arizonans vote by mail, banning ballot harvesting could cripple many disadvantaged communities’ abilities to have their votes count.

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Trump administration threw its support behind Arizona Republicans with a brief stating that it does not think that either rule inherently promotes racial discrimination at the polls.

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Ten senators, led by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, filed a brief in support of the Arizona Republicans. Cruz and the other senators warned that the 9th Circuit’s ruling, if upheld by the Supreme Court, would jeopardize the legitimacy of voting laws across the country.

The senators added that for years, bipartisan groups have supported measures such as ballot-harvesting bans as positive voting laws. They pointed in particular to a commission headed up by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker that recommended that bans could “reduce the risks of fraud and abuse in absentee voting.”

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