Tag Archives: voting restrictions

Texas governor signs Republican-backed voting curbs, prompting lawsuit

By Brad Brooks

(Reuters) -Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Tuesday signed a law imposing a series of voting restrictions – the latest such measure enacted in a Republican-led U.S. state – and civil rights groups immediately filed suit to challenge its legality.

During a signing ceremony in the East Texas city of Tyler, Abbott said the voting restrictions are intended to combat voter fraud, while critics contend they are aimed at making it harder for minorities who tend to back Democratic candidates to cast ballots.

Civil rights organizations sued a group of Texas election authorities in federal court in the state capital Austin. The plaintiffs said the law unduly burdens the right to vote in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment and 14th Amendment, while also saying it is intended to limit minority voters’ access to the ballot box in violation of a federal law called the Voting Rights Act.

Marc Elias, a Democratic lawyer who spearheaded the party’s election legal efforts last year, represents the groups, which include the League of United Latin American Citizens, Voto Latino and the Texas Alliance for Retired Americans.

It is the latest in numerous laws passed this year in Republican-led states creating new barriers to voting following Republican former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him through widespread voting fraud.

The new Texas law prohibits drive-through and 24-hour voting locations and adds new identification requirements for mail-in voting. It also restricts who can help voters requiring assistance because of language barriers or disabilities, prevents officials from sending out unsolicited mail-in ballot applications and empowers partisan poll-watchers.

The Texas measure won final approval in the Republican-controlled state legislature on Aug. 31 in a special legislative session. Passage came after dozens of Democratic lawmakers fled the state on July 12 to break the legislative quorum, delaying action for more than six weeks.

Abbott and other Texas Republicans have said that the measure balances election integrity with ease of voting.

“It ensures that every eligible voter will have the opportunity to vote,” Abbott said at the signing ceremony. “It does also, however, make sure that it is harder for people to cheat at the ballot box in Texas.”

Election experts have said voting fraud is rare in the United States. Democratic opponents of the Texas measure said Republican legislators during debate over the measure presented no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has likened the voting restrictions enacted in Republican-led states to the so-called Jim Crow laws that once disenfranchised Black voters in Southern states. Democrats in the U.S. Congress have not mustered the votes to pass national voting rights legislation that would counter the new state laws.

Democrats and voting rights advocates have said that the Texas legislation, formally called SB1, disproportionately affects Black and Hispanic voters – important voting blocs for Democrats – a claim denied by its Republican backers.

“Our clients will not waste a minute in fighting against this,” said Ryan Cox, a senior staff attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project. “We anticipate that numerous organizations and groups of lawyers are going to be challenging different provisions of SB1 for different reasons.”

(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Texas; Editing by Will Dunham)

House Democrats tee up second voting-rights measure

By Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Democrats said Tuesday they would seek to advance another voting rights measure in the House of Representatives with the hopes of breaking a Senate logjam on the issue, but the odds of doing so remained long.

Democrats want to pass federal voting rights legislation to try to counteract a wave of voting restrictions passed by Republican-led state legislatures. But Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has said voting rules should be left to the states.

House Democrats announced Tuesday they were introducing a bill to restore key protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed discriminatory voting practices. The bill is named after the late Representative John Lewis, a civil rights icon who died last year. A House vote is expected Tuesday.

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down portions of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 and again in 2021. The bill would seek to redress the court’s objections with an updated formula for which jurisdictions are subject to additional federal scrutiny, said a statement from the sponsor, Representative Terri Sewell.

Another voting reform bill has been passed by the House but was blocked by Senate Republicans in June.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said last week that the chamber, divided 50-50 along party lines, will consider more voting rights legislation in September.

(Reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by Andy Sullivan and Nick Zieminski)

Democrats to invest $25 million in voter education

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Democratic party will invest $25 million in voter registration and education efforts, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris will announce on Thursday, as the Biden administration tries to combat restrictive rules passed by Republican-led legislatures in some states.

Harris, who was assigned by the president to lead the administration’s efforts on voting rights, will make the announcement at her alma mater, the historically Black Howard University.

“This campaign is grounded in the firm belief that everyone’s vote matters,” Harris will say, according to remarks provided by the White House. “We are fighting back.”

Harris and President Joe Biden will meet with civil rights groups later on Thursday including the NAACP, National Urban League, National Action Network and others to “discuss the fight to protect the constitutional right to vote,” the White House said in a statement.

Biden’s fellow Democrats have struggled along with civil rights groups to fight a spate of voting restrictions including measures like Georgia’s ban on providing food or water to voters in long lines and a Florida measure giving more power to partisan election observers. The measures can hamper efforts to vote by Black, Latino and younger voters who have helped elect Democrats.

“Democracy is under attack in states across the nation, and we must act with great urgency to protect the American people’s most fundamental and sacred right, the right to vote,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson, who is attending the meeting with Biden, said in an emailed statement.

Last month, Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic-backed national election reform bill that would have expanded opportunities to vote before Election Day, made certain campaign contributions more transparent and reformed the process for drawing of congressional districts. Republicans said it violated states’ authority to set their own election laws.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt, Steve Holland and Merdie Nzanga; Editing by David Gregorio, Heather Timmons and Dan Grebler)

U.S. Supreme Court backs voting restrictions in Arizona

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday endorsed two Republican-backed ballot restrictions in Arizona that a lower court found had disproportionately burdened Black, Latino and Native American voters, handing a defeat to voting rights advocates and Democrats who had challenged the measures.

The 6-3 ruling, with the court’s conservative justices in the majority, held that the restrictions on early ballot collection by third parties and where absentee ballots may be cast did not violate the Voting Rights Act, a landmark 1965 federal law that prohibits racial discrimination in voting.

The court’s three liberal justices dissented from the decision.

The decision comes at a time when states are pursuing a series of Republican-backed voting restrictions in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s claims of widespread election fraud and irregularities in his 2020 loss to now-President Joe Biden.

The ruling represented a victory for the Arizona Republican Party and the state’s Republican attorney general, Mark Brnovich. They had appealed a lower court ruling that had deemed the restrictions unlawful.

The case involves a 2016 Arizona law that made it a crime to provide another person’s completed early ballot to election officials, with the exception of family members or caregivers. Community activists sometimes engage in ballot collection to facilitate voting and increase voter turnout. Ballot collection is legal in most states, with varying limitations. Republican critics call the practice “ballot harvesting.”

The other restriction at issue was a longstanding Arizona policy that discards ballots cast in-person at a precinct other than the one to which a voter has been assigned. In some places, voters’ precincts are not the closest one to their home.

The case raised questions over whether fraud must be documented in order to justify new curbs.

Democrats have accused Republicans at the state level of enacting voter-suppression measures to make it harder for racial minorities who tend to support Democratic candidates to cast ballots. Many Republicans have justified new restrictions as a means to reduce voter fraud, a phenomenon that election experts have said is rare in the United States.

Republicans are seeking to regain control of the U.S. Congress from the Democrats in the 2022 mid-term elections.

The Arizona legal battle concerned a specific provision called Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act that bans voting policies or practices that result in racial discrimination. Section 2 has been the main tool used to show that voting curbs discriminate against minorities since the Supreme Court in 2013 gutted another section of the statute that determined which states with a history of racial discrimination needed federal approval to change voting laws.

Arizona Republicans said in court papers that voting restrictions have partisan effects and impact elections. Invalidating the out-of-precinct policy would reduce Republican electoral prospects because it would increase Democratic turnout, they told the justices during March 2 arguments in the case.

The Republicans said that “race-neutral” regulations on the time, place or manner of an election do not deny anyone their right to vote and that federal law does not require protocols to maximize the participation of racial minorities.

The Democratic National Committee and the Arizona Democratic Party sued over the restrictions. Arizona’s Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs has backed the challenge to the measures.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year found Arizona’s restrictions violated the Voting Rights Act, though they remained in effect for the Nov. 3 election in which Joe Biden, a Democrat, defeated Donald Trump, a Republican, in the state.

The 9th Circuit also found that “false, race-based claims of ballot collection fraud” were used to convince Arizona legislators to enact that restriction with discriminatory intent, violating the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on denying voting rights based on race.

U.S. Senate Republicans on June 23 blocked Democratic-backed legislation that would broadly expand voting rights and establish uniform national voting standards to offset the wave new Republican-led voting restrictions in states.

Biden has sharply criticized Republican-backed state voting restrictions. Biden called a measure signed by Georgia’s Republican governor in March “an atrocity” and likened it to racist “Jim Crow” laws enacted in Southern states in the decades after the 1861-65 U.S. Civil War to legalize racial segregation and disenfranchise Black people.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley in Washington and Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)

Major rulings including Obamacare loom for U.S. Supreme Court

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court heads into the last month of its current term with several major cases yet to be decided including a Republican bid to invalidate the Obamacare healthcare law, a dispute involving LGBT and religious rights and another focused on voting restrictions.

The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, now has 24 cases in total left to decide after issuing two rulings on Tuesday. There also is speculation about the potential retirement of its oldest justice, Stephen Breyer. Some liberal activists have urged Breyer, who is 82 and has served on the court since 1994, to step down so President Joe Biden can appoint a younger liberal jurist to a lifetime post on the court.

In the most notable of Tuesday’s decisions, the court unanimously endorsed the authority of Native American tribal police to stop and detain non-Native Americans on tribal land.

The court’s nine-month term starts in October and generally concludes by the end of June, though last year it continued into July because of delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Speaking during an online event for students on Friday, Breyer hinted at the court’s complex deliberations that go into deciding high-stakes cases at this time of year.

“It’s complicated by the fact that you are dealing with eight other colleagues. … You’d better be willing to compromise,” Breyer said.

Republican-governed states have asked the court to strike down the Affordable Care Act, a law signed in 2010 by Democratic former President Barack Obama that has helped expand healthcare access in the United States even as Republicans call it a government overreach.

It appears unlikely based on November’s oral arguments that the court would take such a drastic step. But if the Obamacare law were to be struck down, up to 20 million Americans could lose their medical insurance and insurers could once again refuse to cover people with pre-existing medical conditions. Obamacare expanded public healthcare programs and created marketplaces for private insurance.

Another major case yet to be decided is one that pits religious rights against LGBT rights as the justices weigh Philadelphia’s refusal to let a Catholic Church-affiliated group participate in the city’s foster care program because it would not accept same-sex couples as prospective foster parents.

The conservative justices appeared during the November arguments in the case to be sympathetic toward the Catholic group’s claim that its religious rights under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment had been violated. The court’s conservative majority has taken an expansive view of religious rights and has spearheaded several rulings backing churches in challenges to COVID-19 pandemic-related restrictions.

With various states enacting new Republican-backed voting restrictions in the aftermath of former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him through widespread voting fraud, the court is preparing to rule in a case concerning Arizona voting limits.

Republican proponents of Arizona’s restrictions cite the need to combat voting fraud. A ruling upholding the restrictions could further undermine the Voting Rights Act, a landmark 1965 federal law that prohibits racial discrimination in voting.

The court also is getting ready to decide a closely watched case involving the free speech rights of public school students. It involves whether a high school that punished a cheerleader for a foul-mouthed social media post made off campus on a weekend violated her free speech rights under the First Amendment.

The court has taken up major cases on gun and abortion rights for its next term, which begins in October.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. Supreme Court begins arguments in major voting rights case

By Andrew Chung and Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Supreme Court justices on Tuesday began hearing arguments on the legality of two Republican-backed voting restrictions in Arizona in a case that could further weaken the Voting Rights Act, a landmark 1965 federal law that bars racial discrimination in voting.

The important voting rights case comes before the justices at a time when Republicans in numerous states are pursuing new restrictions after former President Donald Trump made claims of widespread fraud in the Nov. 3 election. Republican proponents of Arizona’s restrictions cite the need to combat voting fraud.

The justices are hearing arguments by teleconference in appeals by Arizona’s Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich and the state Republican Party of a lower court ruling that found that the voting restrictions at issue disproportionately burdened Black, Hispanic and Native American voters.

One of the measures made it a crime to provide another person’s completed early ballot to election officials, with the exception of family members or caregivers. The other disqualified ballots cast in-person at a precinct other than the one to which a voter has been assigned.

Community activists sometimes engage in ballot collection to facilitate voting and increase voter turnout. The practice, which critics call “ballot harvesting,” is legal in most states, with varying limitations. Voting rights advocates said voters sometimes inadvertently cast ballots at the wrong precinct, with the assigned polling place sometimes not the one closest to a voter’s home.

A broad ruling by the high court, whose 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices appointed by Trump, endorsing the restrictions could impair the Voting Rights Act by making it harder to prove violations. Such a ruling could impact the 2022 mid-term elections in which Republicans are trying to regain control of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate from the Democrats.

A ruling is due by the end of June.

At issue is the Voting Rights Act’s Section 2, which bans any rule that results in voting discrimination “on account of race or color.” This provision has been the main tool used to show that voting curbs discriminate against minorities since the Supreme Court in 2013 gutted another section of the statute that determined which states with a history of racial discrimination needed federal approval to change voting laws.

The Democratic National Committee and the Arizona Democratic Party sued to try to overturn Arizona’s restrictions. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year found that the restrictions violated the Voting Rights Act, though they remained in effect for the Nov. 3 election.

The 9th Circuit also found that “false, race-based claims of ballot collection fraud” were used to convince Arizona legislators to enact that restriction with discriminatory intent, violating the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on denying voting rights based on race.

Numerous courts rejected claims of voting fraud made in lawsuits by Trump and his allies seeking to overturn his loss to Biden. Eleven Republican U.S. senators including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senator Ted Cruz submitted a brief to the Supreme Court supporting the Arizona restrictions.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. Supreme Court set to weigh Republican-backed voting restrictions

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) – Fresh off an election in which former President Donald Trump made claims of fraud, the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to ponder the legality of a restriction on early voting in Arizona that his fellow Republicans argued was needed to combat fraud.

The Republican-backed law, spurred in part by a video purportedly showing voter fraud that courts later deemed misleading, made it a crime to provide another person’s completed early ballot to election officials, with the exception of family members or caregivers.

Community activists sometimes engage in ballot collection to facilitate voting and increase voter turnout. Ballot collection is legal in most states, with varying limitations. Republican critics call the practice “ballot harvesting.”

Supreme Court arguments over the 2016 ban and another Arizona voting restriction – both ruled unlawful by a lower court – are scheduled for next Tuesday, with a decision due by the end of June. A broad ruling by high court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, endorsing the restrictions could further weaken the Voting Rights Act, a landmark 1965 federal law that barred racial discrimination in voting, by making it harder to prove violations.

The video, taken from security camera footage, shows a man carrying a box of ballots into a Maricopa County Elections Department office. It was posted on a blog in 2014 by A.J. LaFaro, the Republican Party chairman at the time in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix.

LaFaro’s post questioned whether the man was a U.S. citizen and called him a “violent thug” who was “stuffing the ballot box as I watched in amazement.” A judge later called the blog post “racially charged” and concluded that the footage showed no illegal activity. The man seen in the video filed an unsuccessful defamation suit against LaFaro.

Republican-governed states including Arizona have imposed a variety of voting restrictions in recent years. In the aftermath of Trump’s claims of fraud, further curbs on voting are being pursued in 33 states, according to New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice.

‘THE MAIN TOOL’

At issue in the Supreme Court case is the Voting Rights Act’s Section 2, which bans any rule that results in voting discrimination “on account of race or color.” The court in 2013 gutted another section of the statute that determined which states with a history of racial discrimination needed federal approval to change voting laws.

Weakening Section 2 would eliminate “the main tool we have left now to protect voters against racial discrimination,” said Myrna Pérez, director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program.

“If there’s one thing that the election and the insurrection showed it’s that not everyone buys into the idea of free, fair and accessible elections,” Pérez added, referring to a pro-Trump mob’s Jan. 6 rampage at the U.S. Capitol.

The Supreme Court case also involves a longstanding Arizona policy that discards ballots cast in-person at a precinct other than the one to which a voter has been assigned. In some places, voters’ precincts are not the closest one to their home.

The case pits Arizona’s Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich and the Arizona Republican Party against the Democratic National Committee and the Arizona Democratic Party, which sued over the restrictions. Arizona’s Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs has backed the challenge.

The two sides differ sharply over whether genuine voter fraud must be documented to justify ballot restrictions.

“The notion that voter fraud must be proved in order to enact regulations of elections is not established in the law,” said Republican election lawyer Jason Torchinsky, who filed a brief backing Brnovich. “There are tons of areas where legislatures legislate without proving that some kind of fraud or crime has occurred.”

Jessica Ring Amunson, an attorney who represents Hobbs, said courts should take false fraud claims into account when evaluating the legality of voting restrictions.

Legislatures often justify such restrictions as necessary to tackle fraud and increase voter confidence, but “simultaneously they’re spreading baseless claims of voter fraud when none exists, and that is the very thing that is leading to people losing confidence in elections,” she added.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year found Arizona’s restrictions unlawful, though they remained in effect for the Nov. 3 election. It ruled that the restrictions disproportionately burdened Black, Hispanic and Native American voters and violated the Voting Rights Act.

The 9th Circuit also found that “false, race-based claims of ballot collection fraud” were used to convince Arizona legislators to enact that restriction with discriminatory intent, violating the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on denying voting rights based on race.

U.S. District Judge Douglas Rayes in 2018 faulted Arizona’s legislature for its “misinformed belief that ballot collection fraud was occurring,” but upheld the voting restrictions. The 9th Circuit last year overturned that ruling.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)

Arizona voting curbs remain as U.S. Supreme Court takes Republican appeal

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a defense by Arizona Republicans of two voting restrictions in the state that were ruled unlawful by a lower court as disproportionately burdening Black, Hispanic and Native American voters, meaning the measures will remain in place for the Nov. 3 election.

The measures prohibit absentee ballot collection by third parties and the counting of ballots cast at the wrong polling precinct. The justices will hear appeals of a January ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals invalidating the provisions as violations of the Voting Rights Act, a 1965 U.S. law that barred racial discrimination in voting.

Both measures will stay in place for the upcoming election because the 9th Circuit put its decision on hold pending Supreme Court action on the appeal filed by the state, Republican Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich and the state Republican Party.

Brnovich praised the court’s agreement to hear the appeal, adding, “As we contend with a politically polarized climate and battle a global pandemic, we must sustain the cornerstone of our government and ensure the true will of the electorate is heard.”

The Arizona dispute involves a Republican-backed 2016 state law that made it a crime to hand someone else’s completed early ballot to election officials, with the exception of family members or caregivers. Community activists sometimes engage in such ballot collection to facilitate voting and increase voter turnout. Critics call the practice ballot harvesting.

Ballot collection is legal in most states, with varying limitations. Twenty-six states allow voters to designate someone to return their ballot for them, 10 allow family members to do so, while the rest require voters to return their own ballot or are silent on the issue.

The case also involves a longstanding state policy that discards provisional ballots cast in-person at a precinct other than the one to which a voter has been assigned. In some places, a voter’s precinct is not the closest precinct to their home. Provisional ballots are those cast when a voter does not appear on that precinct’s voter rolls.

Nearly 30,000 out-of-precinct ballots were tossed out during the 2008, 2012 and 2016 presidential elections in Arizona, court filings said.

The Democratic National Committee and the Arizona Democratic Party sued the state’s Republican officials in 2016 over the provisions.

The 9th Circuit ruled that both Arizona voting measures had a discriminatory impact on racial minorities in violation of the Voting Rights Act. The 9th Circuit further found that the ballot collection prohibition violated the U.S. Constitution’s 15th Amendment, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting, noting that “false, race-based claims of ballot collection fraud” were used to convince Arizona legislators to pass the law.

The case, which began in 2016, is part of a wave of voting-related litigation ahead of the November election in which President Donald Trump is seeking a second term.

It touches upon issues including voting by mail that Trump has seized upon in his attacks on the integrity of the election. He and some fellow Republicans have asserted, without evidence, that a surge in mail-in voting amid the coronavirus pandemic will lead to election fraud, which is exceptionally rare in the United States.

The court took action in the case three days before it begins its new nine-month term short one justice after the Sept. 18 death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. President Donald Trump has nominated federal appeals court judge Amy Coney Barrett to replace Ginsburg.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Additional reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Will Dunham)