Supreme Court The Republican Party was handed a small victory Thursday, making it slightly harder for new voters to register to vote in Arizona
The decision, however, could be worse for voting rights: Republicans asked the justices to strip thousands of already registered voters of their ability to vote for president. Three justices voted to do just that, but six members of the court rejected the request.
Nevertheless, five members of the court — every member of the court’s Republican majority except Justice Amy Coney Barrett — voted to make it more difficult to register to vote in Arizona.
So this is a victory for the GOP, but perhaps not a particularly significant one. If the three most MAGA-leaning justices, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, had won, a meaningful portion of Arizona voters could have been left out of the 2024 presidential election. But it didn’t happen.
The court’s decision is almost certainly wrong for Republicans to narrowly win here, cautioning the justices under a 2006 Supreme Court decision. don’t change A state’s election system is very close to election. But the impact of Thursday’s GOP victory could be fairly modest.
Arizona’s ridiculously complicated voter registration system explained
known as litigation Republican National Committee v. Me Familia VotaInvolves a ridiculously complicated system that Arizona uses to register voters.
In 2004, Arizona enacted a law requiring voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship (such as a passport or birth certificate) when registering to vote. However, this law conflicts with a federal law known as the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which allows each state to register voters using a standardized federal form. The federal form requires Arizona voters to swear, under penalty of perjury, that they are citizens, but Arizona state law does not require the same documentary evidence.
In Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona (2013), the Supreme Court ruled that Arizona must comply with the NVRA and allow voters who submit federal forms to register – but there was a twist. Inter-tribal also suggested that Congress’s power over voter registration be limited to “federal elections,” so Arizona responded. Inter-tribal Creates two tiers of voters.
Voters who submit state forms (including documents proving citizenship) are registered to vote in all Arizona elections. But voters who submit federal forms are considered “federal-only” voters and can only vote in congressional and presidential elections — and not for state and local offices.
An expert witness who testified RNC Case estimated that “about one-third a [percent] of non-Hispanic white voters [in Arizona] Only federal voters, while slightly more than that Two-thirds of one percent of minority voters are federal-only voters” So the universe of registered voters using federal forms isn’t that big, but it’s disproportionately non-white, which probably explains the GOP’s interest in the field — among other things, Republicans wanted to prevent these federal-only voters from casting a vote for president. .
In 2020, President Joe Biden lost white voters in Arizona, but narrowly won the state because of him. Strong performance among Latinos. Biden’s margin of victory was only three-tenths of a percentage point, so even a small change in who was allowed to vote in Arizona could have changed the outcome.
So what was really at stake RNC v. My family vote The lawsuit?
Republicans asked the court to impose three restrictions contained in a 2022 Arizona state law, which never took effect and which was blocked by a federal court in 2023.
The law sought to ban federal-only voters in Arizona from voting for president, and it would also bar them from voting by mail. Although Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch voted to allow both of these restrictions to take effect, the majority of the justices did not.
Additionally, the 2022 legislation sought to override a 2018 court order that allowed voters who submitted state forms without proof of citizenship to still register as federal-only voters. Five justices voted to allow this provision of the 2022 law to take effect. So new voters who submit state forms without required documents will not be registered at all.
Voters who submit federal forms will still be registered as federal-only voters.
This decision to allow a small portion of the 2022 Act to take effect is almost certainly wrong. The 2022 law was blocked by a 2023 federal court decision and the Supreme Court ruled Purcell v. Gonzalez (2006) that “federal courts generally will not change state election rules close to an election.”
Thursday’s order changes Arizona’s state election rules just two months before the presidential election. Prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling, lower court orders blocking three provisions of the 2022 Act remained in effect. Now the rules have changed, albeit slightly.
In the past, the court has wielded a Republican majority Parcel Very aggressively when lower court judges hand down voting rights decisions that make changes that benefit Democrats. Justice Brett Kavanagh also suggested that Parcel The window opens more than nine months before the general election. So the GOP’s request to change Arizona’s voting rules less than three months before an election should have been rejected if the justices had been consistent.
Still, unless the 2024 election is historically close, Thursday’s decision is unlikely to change the outcome of the upcoming election. Again, a majority of justices voted to reject the GOP’s most aggressive attack on voting rights — provisions of the 2022 Act that bar federal-only electors from voting for president.
