The Supreme Court voted that an Arizona voting law restricting how ballots can be cast does not violate the Voting Rights Act.
The vote was 6 to 3, the court’s three liberal members dissenting.
The restrictive law and subsequent ruling make it harder for communities of color, predominantly Black communities to vote.
“Where a state provides multiple ways to vote,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for the majority, “any burden imposed on voters who choose one of the available options cannot be evaluated without also taking into account the other available means.”
Republicans are still pushing the narrative that former president Donald Trump lost the election due to widespread voter fraud. In actuality, communities of color came out in droves to vote Trump out of office. The GOP has been working hard to pass restrictive voting legislation to silence people of color once again.
In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote, “Wherever it can, the majority gives a cramped reading to broad language. And then it uses that reading to uphold two election laws from Arizona that discriminate against minority voters.”
“What is tragic here,” she insists, “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. What is tragic is that the court has damaged a statute designed to bring about ‘the end of discrimination in voting.'”
The Conservatives are on a misguided mission.
“Fraud can affect the outcome of a close election, and fraudulent votes dilute the right of citizens to cast ballots that carry appropriate weight” Alito wrote, adding that fraud can “also undermine public confidence in the fairness of elections and the perceived legitimacy of the announced outcome.”
