ULY 1, 2021 7:03 AM PT
WASHINGTON —
The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a voting-rights challenge to Arizona’s election laws, ruling the state may discard legal ballots that are cast in the wrong precinct even if doing so results in throwing out a much higher percentage of votes cast by Latinos, Blacks and Native Americans than whites.
The court also upheld a second provision that makes it a crime for anyone other than family members or postal workers to deliver a mail ballot, a rule that has a significant impact on tribal reservations.
By a 6-3 vote, the justices held the state’s election laws do not violate the Voting Rights Act and its ban on rules that have a discriminatory impact based on race or ethnicity.
Writing for the conservative majority, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said voting in Arizona is “equally open” to all eligible voters, and that “mere inconvenience cannot be enough to demonstrate a violation” of the Voting Rights Act.
The court’s three liberal justices dissented.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote: “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.”
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-07-01/supreme-court-upholds-arizonas-voting-restrictions-turns-away-democrats-challenge