New York Times: Supreme Court Case Could Limit Options to Fight Republican Voting Restrictions
New York Times: Supreme Court Case Could Limit Options to Fight Republican Voting
WASHINGTON — There was not much subtlety to the Republicans’ argument to the Supreme Court on Tuesday for allowing laws that effectively limit voting access for people of color.
Overturning a restrictive Arizona law, said Michael A. Carvin, the lawyer representing the Republican Party of Arizona, “puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats. Politics is a zero-sum game, and every extra vote they get through unlawful interpretations of Section 2 hurts us,” referring to the part of the Voting Rights Act that is generally used to protect voting access for minority groups.
“It’s the difference between winning an election 50-49 and losing,” he said.
Mr. Carvin’s explanation, in response to a softball question from Justice Amy Coney Barrett about the Republican Party’s interest in a lawsuit brought by Democrats against Arizona, struck at the heart of the latest Supreme Court case that could have a major impact on states’ ability to curtail voting rights.
At issue before the court are Arizona laws forbidding third-party collection of ballots, which Republicans derisively call harvesting, and another requiring election officials to discard ballots cast at the wrong precinct. The broader question is the future of the Voting Rights Act, and whether states will be allowed to restrict voting access unimpeded. …
Section 2 lawsuits have proven pivotal in striking down or modifying restrictions on people’s ability to cast ballots. Among them are a 2015 case overturning Texas’ strict voter ID law and a 2016 decision nullifying a North Carolina voting law, whose constraints ranged from strict ID requirements to limiting voter registration and early voting. In the latter case, an appeals court wrote that Republicans in the state legislature had used the law to target Black voters “with almost surgical precision.”
“It would make it all the harder to stop some of these really dangerous voting laws,” said Stephen Spaulding, a senior counsel for public policy at Common Cause. “It would be an accelerant for further voter suppression.”