The Supreme Court issued an order on Saturday allowing Arizona to enforce a law banning so-called ballot harvesting, in which others collect voters’ completed absentee ballots and submit them to election officials. The court’s two-sentence order stayed a ruling from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that would have temporarily blocked the law. The justices gave no reasons for reviving the law, but the court often views last-minute changes to election procedures with disfavor. Arizona allows voters to submit absentee ballots by mail or in person. The challenged law, enacted this year, barred letting others collect the ballots, with exceptions for family members and caregivers. According to officials in Arizona, there are similar laws in 26 other states and nearly identical ones in “14 other states that make mass ballot collection in some form a felony.”
A Democratic group challenged the Arizona law, saying it placed an unlawful burden on the right to vote and disproportionately affected minority voters, notably Native Americans. A divided three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit refused to block the law, reasoning that it placed a minimal burden on the right to vote while advancing the state’s interests in “preserving ballot secrecy and preventing undue influence, fraud, ballot tampering and voter intimidation.”
In dissent, Chief Judge Sidney R. Thomas said Arizona had “criminalized one of the most popular and effective methods by which minority voters cast their ballots.” He said, for instance, that Native American voters in rural areas often did not have ready access to reliable transportation or to the postal system and so relied on ballot collectors. The full Ninth Circuit agreed to rehear the case, scheduling arguments in January. In the meantime, on Friday, it blocked the law by a 6-to-5 vote.
Full Article: Arizona Can Ban ‘Ballot Harvesting,’ Supreme Court Says – The New York Times.