Washington.- The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a Republican-led effort that could have prevented more than 41,000 Arizona voters from casting ballots in the presidential election, although it did allow sections of a law requiring proof of citizenship to go into effect.
The 5-4 ruling followed an emergency appeal by state and national Republicans seeking to give full effect to voting measures enacted after President Joe Biden defeated Republican Donald Trump in Arizona by nearly 11,000 votes. The measures have sparked intense opposition from voting rights advocates.
The case could be one of several election disputes that could reach the Supreme Court with less than 90 days to go before the November U.S. election.
Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch would have allowed the law to go into effect in its entirety. But Judge Amy Coney Barrett would have joined the court’s three liberal justices in rejecting the appeal entirely, the order said.
The justices did not elaborate on their reasoning in a brief ruling, as is typically the case when an emergency appeal is filed.
Trump praised the high court’s decision, saying it had shown “great courage in doing what they’re doing.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling allows restrictions that prevent people who do not provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote to take effect while the legal battle in lower courts continues.
State registration forms submitted without “documentary proof of citizenship” will now be rejected by Arizona counties, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said. However, people can still register to vote in presidential and midterm elections using a different federal form, which requires them to swear they are U.S. citizens under penalty of perjury but does not require documentary proof.
“My concern is that changes to the process should not occur so close to an election; they create confusion for voters,” Fontes said in a statement. “We respect the court’s decision and will implement these changes while continuing to protect voter access and make the voting process simple.”
Rick Hasen, an election law expert and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote in a blog post that laws requiring proof of citizenship “are a huge deal” because “they can literally disenfranchise thousands of eligible voters for no valid reason.”
Supporters of the measure say it is intended to eliminate the possibility of fraud. Republicans at the national and state levels had asked the Supreme Court to intervene in a legal battle over voter registration restrictions that Republicans enacted in Arizona in 2022 after Biden won the state two years earlier.
The high court issued its ruling after a lower court blocked a requirement that state voter registration forms be rejected if they were not accompanied by documents proving U.S. citizenship. A second measure would have barred voters who could not prove they are U.S. citizens from voting in the presidential election or voting by mail.
An appeals panel of three Trump-appointed judges initially partially blocked the lower court’s ruling and allowed a provision regarding state registration forms to go into effect. But another appeals panel voted 2-1 to block both provisions. Two Clinton-appointed judges allowed the registration process to go forward, despite a dissent from a Trump-appointed judge.
The measures were approved along partisan lines and signed into law by then-Republican Gov. Doug Ducey amid a wave of proposals that Republicans introduced across the country — including Arizona — following Biden’s victory over Trump in 2020.
For state and local elections, voters must provide proof of citizenship at the time of registration or have it on file with state officials. Because that is not a requirement to vote in federal congressional or presidential elections, tens of thousands of voters who have not provided proof of citizenship are only eligible to vote in federal elections.
There were 41,352 such registered voters in Arizona as of Aug. 9, Fontes said.
The Republican effort to bar such people from voting would hit members of the military, students and indigenous people the hardest, Fontes said. About 27 percent of those voters are Democrats and 15 percent are Republicans. More than half, 54 percent, are independents, according to state data.
Voting rights groups and the Biden administration had filed lawsuits challenging the laws in Arizona, a state with no clear voting preference.
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach led a list of Republican attorneys general from 24 states who supported the restrictions.
Arizona House Speaker Ben Toma, who along with Senate President Warren Petersen had asked the court to weigh in, said in a statement that Thursday’s ruling was “a step in the right direction toward requiring proof of citizenship in all of our elections.” Toma and Petersen are Republicans.
People who can vote only in federal elections have been the subject of political wrangling since the Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that Arizona cannot require documentary proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections. The state responded by creating two classes of electors: those who can vote in all races and those who can vote only in federal elections.
There is no evidence that the federal-only electorate has allowed noncitizens to vote illegally, but skeptical Republicans have worked hard to end the federal-only restriction anyway.
One of the new laws was intended to further divide voters by allowing voting in legislative elections without proof of citizenship, but denying it in presidential elections.
Even the Legislature’s lawyers had said much of the measure was unconstitutional, contradicted the Supreme Court’s earlier ruling and would likely be thrown out of court.
Meanwhile, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled Thursday on several other cases related to the election process, clearing the way for citizen initiative measures facing legal challenges to now appear on the ballot. Arizona voters will have a chance to decide whether they want to establish open primaries in which all candidates compete, regardless of party affiliation, which would change the state’s primaries from closed to open.
The justices rejected two of the opponents’ several arguments. The measure has a pending challenge, but if a ruling is not issued on it by Friday morning, it will officially remain on the ballot.
Voters in other states, including Idaho, South Dakota and Nevada, will also decide in November on similar initiatives regarding open primaries.
The Supreme Court also ruled that the title of an initiative seeking to reduce workers’ wages by up to 25% per hour if they receive tips is not misleading, so it will remain on the November ballot.
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