Subterms
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyCan Anything End the Voting Wars?As battles over voting rules burn hotter, the stakes are still lower than both sides seem to think.Opinion ColumnistMarch 16, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit…Illustration by Arsh Raziuddin, Photos, via Getty More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFor Voting Rights Advocates, a ‘Once in a Generation Moment’ LoomsOpposition to restrictive Republican voting laws — and support for a sweeping Democratic bill — fuels a movement like none in decades. But can it succeed?Protesters demonstrating against proposed changes to Georgia’s voting laws, this month in Atlanta.Credit…Ben Gray/Associated PressNicholas Fandos and March 15, 2021Updated 9:53 a.m. ETWASHINGTON — State and national voting-rights advocates are waging the most consequential political struggle over access to the ballot since the civil rights era, a fight increasingly focused on a far-reaching federal overhaul of election rules in a last-ditch bid to offset a wave of voting restrictions sweeping Republican-controlled state legislatures.The federal voting bill, which passed in the House this month with only Democratic support, includes a landmark national expansion of voting rights, an end to partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts and new transparency requirements on the flood of dark money financing elections that would override the rash of new state laws.The energy in support for it radiates from well-financed veteran organizers to unpaid volunteers, many who were called to political activism after former President Donald J. Trump’s upset win in 2016. It is engaging Democrats in Washington and voting rights activists in crucial states from Georgia to Iowa to West Virginia to Arizona — some facing rollbacks in access to the ballot, some with senators who will play pivotal roles and some with both.But after approval of the Democratic bill in the House, the campaign to pass the For the People Act, designated Senate Bill 1, increasingly appears to be on a collision course with the filibuster. The rule requires 60 votes for passage of most legislation in a bitterly divided Senate, meaning that Republicans can kill the voting bill and scores of other liberal priorities despite unified Democratic control of Washington.To succeed, Democrats will have to convince a handful of moderate holdouts to change the rules, at least for this legislation, with the likelihood that a single defection in their own party would doom their efforts. It is a daunting path with no margin for error, but activists believe the costs for failure, given the Republican limits on voting, would be so high that some accommodation on the filibuster could become inevitable.Two left-leaning elections groups, the advocacy arm of End Citizens United and Let America Vote along with the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, plan this week to announce an infusion of $30 million to try to hasten the groundswell. The money will fund paid advertising in at least a dozen states and finance organizers to target Democratic and Republican swing senators in six of them.“We are at a once-in-a-generation moment,” said Tiffany Muller, president of End Citizens United and Let America Vote. “We either are going to see one of the most massive rollbacks of our democracy in generations, or we have an opportunity to say: ‘No, that is not what America stands for. We are going to strengthen democracy and make sure everyone has an equal voice.’”The sense of a pivotal moment is the one thing Democrats and Republicans agree on. Republicans are still inflamed by Mr. Trump’s false claims of a stolen election and the party’s unified message that voting restrictions, many of which fall most heavily on minorities and Democratic-leaning voters, are needed to prevent fraud, which studies have repeatedly shown to barely exist.“This bill is the opposite of good governance — it’s a cynical attempt by the left to put their thumb on the scales of democracy and engineer our laws to help them win elections,” said Dan Conston, president of the Republican-aligned American Action Network. “They want to limit free speech, funnel public funds into their campaign accounts, seize from states the ability to run their own free and fair elections, and then spin it like this is really all about protecting voting rights.”Ms. Muller and others are ostensibly focused on winning support for election legislation from 10 moderate Republican senators, including Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan M. Collins of Maine.But with Republican leaders promising near-unanimous opposition in the Senate, Democrats and their allies are positioning voting rights as the most persuasive case for scrapping or changing the filibuster that would limit much of Democrats’ legislative agenda.Voting rights groups are hoping to sway moderate senators like Lisa Murkowski, left, and Susan Collins toward supporting the federal voting bill. Credit…Al Drago for The New York Times“It is too important an issue and we are facing too big a crisis to let an arcane procedural motion hold back the passage of this bill,” Ms. Muller said. She argued that the rollback of voting rights was an existential threat to the democracy on which all other liberal causes, from gun control to health care reform, depend.The urgency for federal action has mounted not just among Washington lobbyists and Democratic lawmakers, but grass roots groups that normally fight battles in state legislatures and city councils. Many spent the winter opposing the Republican voting agenda that included curbs on mail-in and early voting and stiffer voter ID requirements.Lawmakers in Republican-controlled states have largely rebuffed those groups, leaving Democrats to see federal action as the only possible brake on widespread voting restrictions. At the same time, a handful of crucial Republican-led states are preparing to draw new state and congressional district maps in the fall that could further tilt power in their direction and lock Democrats out of a House majority for years.Voting-rights proponents say they have not given up on stopping restrictive laws in states. The Arizona group Civic Engagement Beyond Voting, has already registered 2,000 people this year to testify remotely on proposed state legislation, with voting rights as a priority.“People are up in arms,” said Cathy Kouts Sigmon, the group’s founder. “They’re relating these bills to how they vote and how members of their family vote.”Voting-rights advocates in Georgia, who claim to have slowed or killed some restrictive bills, are aiming at local companies that have supported the bills’ sponsors, including Home Depot, Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines and UPS. An advertising campaign led by voting and civil rights groups demands that the firms use their lobbying muscle in the Georgia statehouse to stop repressive voting bills instead of contributing to their Republican authors.“They spent most of Black History Month peppering us with Martin Luther King quotes, but now that Blacks’ future is in jeopardy, they’re silent,” Nsé Ufot, the chief executive of one participant, the New Georgia Project, said last week. “We’re using digital ads, billboards, direct action at warehouses and call centers — we’re serious. This is urgent.”One possible sign of some success: On Sunday, the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, whose members include those companies, expressed “concern and opposition” to restrictive clauses in two Republican bills.Nsé Ufot, chief executive of the New Georgia Project, speaking in Atlanta in November.Credit…Marcus Ingram/Getty Images for MoveonIncreasingly, though, the focus is on federal legislation. Ms. Sigmon’s group is recruiting Arizonans to lobby their senators on the elections bill. So are local chapters of Indivisible, a movement founded in response to Mr. Trump’s election, in Georgia and Arizona.And so have national advocacy groups. Common Cause runs weeknight phone banks recruiting backers for the bill, and says it has generated 700,000 text messages supporting it. “It’s been a pretty incredible outpouring of support, because we all know what this moment means,” said Izzy Bronstein, the group’s national campaigns manager. In Phoenix, the advocacy group Progress Arizona coordinates a statewide campaign to persuade Senator Kyrsten Sinema, a first-term Democrat, to drop her support of the filibuster. Among its tactics: billboards projected at night onto buildings and other spots, calling for an end to the filibuster and displaying the senator’s Capitol Hill phone number.In Charleston, W. Va., Takeiya Smith of the advocacy group For West Virginia’s Future works with some 70 students at six state colleges to generate calls on Senate Bill 1 to Senators Shelley Capito, a Republican, and particularly Joe Manchin III, a Democrat whose support for the filibuster is a liberal target. The group plans daily campus events this week highlighting different parts of the measure. It is in turn allied with a national coalition, the Declaration for American Democracy, that has enrolled 190 organizations to push for its passage.In Atlanta, the Black Voters Matter Fund is preparing with other groups a national campaign for Senate Bill 1 aimed at both senators and President Biden, who has expressed hope for the bill’s passage but has not actively worked for it.“He’s got to have his Lyndon B. Johnson moment,” said Cliff Albright, the group’s executive director, referring to the former president’s arm-twisting on Capitol Hill for the Voting Rights Act in 1965. “You’re president of the United States. You need to do more than hope that it passes,” he said of Mr. Biden. “He needs to use everything he’s learned over 47 years in Washington, D.C., to get this bill passed.”Democrats first introduced the elections bill in 2019 as a catchall measure to address growing public disillusionment with dark money and corporate interests in politics. But as Republican state officials have raced to target voter participation, the bill’s voting provisions have increasingly been viewed by many on the left as essential protections to American democracy — and to the ability of Democratic voters to cast ballots.If it became law, the bill would drastically expand early and mail-in voting, neuter restrictive state voter ID laws, make it harder to purge voter rolls while automatically registering all eligible voters and restoring voting rights to former felons. Those and other changes would most likely increase voter participation, especially by minority voters who disproportionately lean Democratic.Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic caucus promoted the party’s legislation on voting this month.Credit…J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressSenators plan to reintroduce the bill this week and Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota and the chairwoman of the Senate committee that will advance it, has promised a hearing on March 24.But what happens next is a matter of hot political and strategic debate centered on Democrats’ fight over the filibuster, where a handful of moderates so far appear unwilling to change or drop the tactic. All 50 Democrats probably would have to agree to alter the rules.In an interview, Ms. Klobuchar suggested that if senators could not agree to scrap the filibuster altogether, they could try to find a compromise, potentially allowing measures on voting and elections like Senate Bill 1 to pass with a simple majority, but not other bills.“It is so fundamental to everything else, it has to get done,” she said.Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, has been less definitive but indicated last week that he, too, may view voting rights as a unique case. “If we can get some bipartisan support, great, but if not, our caucus will meet and we will figure out how to get it done,” he said in a radio interview. “Failure is not an option.”End Citizens United, Let America Vote and the National Democratic Redistricting Committee plan to run television and digital ads in Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Maine and Pennsylvania, homes to several key swing senators. A later phase will target up to 15 red and blue states. The groups will also dispatch 50 paid staff members to states, including Mr. Manchin’s West Virginia.“We almost don’t have a choice,” said Kelly Ward Burton, president of the Democratic redistricting group. “Because of what’s happening in the states, it’s not theoretical. It’s happening right before our eyes. It would be irresponsible not to do anything about this.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyIn Georgia, Republicans Take Aim at Role of Black Churches in ElectionsNew proposals by the G.O.P.-controlled Legislature have targeted Sunday voting, part of a raft of measures that could reduce the impact of Black voters in the state.Israel Small spent most of last fall helping members of his church with the absentee voting process.Credit…Stephen B. Morton for The New York TimesNick Corasaniti and March 6, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETSAVANNAH, Ga. — Sundays are always special at the St. Philip Monumental A.M.E. church. But in October, the pews are often more packed, the sermon a bit more urgent and the congregation more animated, and eager for what will follow: piling into church vans and buses — though some prefer to walk — and heading to the polls.Voting after Sunday church services, known colloquially as “souls to the polls,” is a tradition in Black communities across the country, and Pastor Bernard Clarke, a minister since 1991, has marshaled the effort at St. Philip for five years. His sermons on those Sundays, he said, deliver a message of fellowship, responsibility and reverence.“It is an opportunity for us to show our voting rights privilege as well as to fulfill what we know that people have died for, and people have fought for,” Mr. Clarke said.Now, Georgia Republicans are proposing new restrictions on weekend voting that could severely curtail one of the Black church’s central roles in civic engagement and elections. Stung by losses in the presidential race and two Senate contests, the state party is moving quickly to push through these limits and a raft of other measures aimed directly at suppressing the Black turnout that helped Democrats prevail in the critical battleground state.“The only reason you have these bills is because they lost,” said Bishop Reginald T. Jackson, who oversees all 534 A.M.E. churches in Georgia. “What makes it even more troubling than that is there is no other way you can describe this other than racism, and we just need to call it what it is.’’The push for new restrictions in Georgia comes amid a national effort by Republican-controlled state legislatures to impose harsh restrictions on voting access, in states like Iowa, Arizona and Texas.But the targeting of Sunday voting in new bills that are moving through Georgia’s Legislature has stirred the most passionate reaction, with critics saying it recalls some of the racist voting laws from the state’s past.“I can remember the first time I went to register,” said Diana Harvey Johnson, 74, a former state senator who lives in Savannah. “I went to the courthouse by myself and there was actually a Mason jar sitting on top of the counter. And the woman there asked me how many butterbeans were in that jar,” suggesting that she needed to guess correctly in order to be allowed to register.“I had a better chance of winning the Georgia lottery than guess how many butterbeans,” Ms. Harvey Johnson continued. “But the fact that those kinds of disrespects and demoralizing and dehumanizing practices — poll taxes, lynchings, burning crosses and burning down houses and firing people and putting people in jail, just to keep them from voting — that is not that far away in history. But it looks like some people want to revisit that. And that is absolutely unacceptable.”Diana Harvey Johnson, a former Georgia state senator, said she remembered facing “dehumanizing practices” when registering to vote in her youth.Credit…Stephen B. Morton for The New York TimesThe bill that passed the House would limit voting to at most one Sunday in October, but even that would be up to the discretion of the local registrar. It would also severely cut early voting hours in total, limit voting by mail and greatly restrict the use of drop boxes — all measures that activists say would disproportionately affect Black voters.A similar bill is awaiting a vote in the Senate. Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, has indicated he supports new laws to “secure the vote” but has not committed to all of the restrictions.Voting rights advocates say there is deep hypocrisy embedded in some of the new proposals. It was Georgia Republicans, they point out, who championed mail balloting in the early 2000s and automatic voting registration just five years ago, only to say they need to be limited now that more Black voters have embraced them.Georgia was one of nine mostly Southern states and scores of counties and municipalities — including the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan — whose records of racist voter suppression required them to get federal clearance for changes to their election rules. The requirement fell under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the civil rights era law that curtailed the disenfranchisement of Blacks in the South.The changes Republicans are now pursuing would have faced stiff federal review and possible blockage under the part of the act known as Section 5. But the Supreme Court, with a conservative majority, effectively gutted that section in a 2013 ruling.Even after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, churches played a key role in civic engagement, often organizing nonpartisan political action committees during the 1970s and ’80s that provided, among other resources, trips to vote on Sunday where it was permitted. The phrase “souls to the polls” took root in Florida in the 1990s, according to David D. Daniels III, a professor of church history at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. Raphael Warnock, one of the Democrats who won a special Senate race in January, is himself the pastor of the storied Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.Historically, churches provided Black congregants more than just transportation or logistical help. Voting as a congregation also offered a form of haven from the intimidation and violence that often awaited Black voters at the polls.“That was one of the things that my father said, that once Black people got the right to vote, they would all go together because they knew that there was going to be a problem,” said Robert Evans, 59, a member of St. Phillip Monumental. “Bringing them all together made them feel more comfortable to actually go and do the civic duty.”In Georgia, the role of the A.M.E. church in civic engagement has been growing under the guidance of Bishop Jackson. Last year he began Operation Voter Turnout, seeking to expand the ways that A.M.E. churches could prepare their members to participate in elections. The operation focused on voter education, registration drives, assistance with absentee ballots and a coordinated Sunday voting operation.Bishop Reginald T. Jackson in Atlanta. He began a program to better prepare church members to participate in elections.Credit…Matthew Odom for The New York TimesIt had an impact in last November’s election, even amid the coronavirus pandemic: According to the Center for New Data, a nonprofit research group, African-Americans voted at a higher rate on weekends than voters identifying as white in 107 of the state’s 159 counties. Internal numbers from Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group, found that Black voters made up roughly 37 percent of those who voted early on Sunday in Georgia, while the Black population of Georgia is about 32 percent.State Representative Barry Fleming, a Republican and chief sponsor of the House bill, did not respond to requests for comment, nor did three other Republican sponsors. In introducing the bill, Republicans in the Legislature portrayed the new restrictions as efforts to “secure the vote” and “restore confidence” in the electoral process, but offered no rationale beyond that and no credible evidence that it was flawed. (Georgia’s election was pronounced secure by Republican electoral officials and reaffirmed by multiple audits and court decisions.)Limiting Sunday voting would affect Black voters beyond losing the assistance of the church. It would inevitably lead to longer lines during the week, especially in the Black community, which has historically been underserved on Election Day.The bill would also ban what is known as “line warming,” the practice of having volunteers provide water, snacks, chairs and other assistance to voters in line.Latoya Brannen, 43, worked with members of the church and a nonprofit group called 9 to 5 to hand out snacks and personal protective equipment in November.“We’ve learned that giving people just those small items helps keep them in line,” Ms. Brannen said. She said she had occasionally handed out bubbles to parents who brought young children with them.If Sunday voting is limited, it could induce more Black Georgians to vote by mail. During the pandemic, churches played an instrumental role in helping African-Americans navigate the absentee ballot system, which they had not traditionally used in the same proportion as white voters.At Greater Gaines Chapel A.M.E., a church about a half-mile from St. Philip Monumental, Israel Small spent most of last fall helping church members with the absentee process.“We took people to drop boxes to help make sure it would be counted,” said Mr. Small, 79. He said he was angered to learn this winter that Republicans were moving to restrict mail voting, too.Among the changes Republican state legislators have proposed is a requirement that voters provide proof of their identification — their license numbers or copies of official ID cards — with their absentee ballot applications.That signals a shift for Republicans, who have long controlled the Statehouse; in 2005 they passed a similar proposal, but for in-person voting.Pastor Bernard Clarke of St. Philip Monumental A.M.E. church has marshaled the effort to get his congregation to the polls for five years.Credit…Stephen B. Morton for The New York TimesThat measure included a new “anti-fraud” requirement that voters present one of a limited set of government-issued identification cards, like a driver’s license, at voting stations.The restrictions affected Black voters disproportionately, data showed. At the same time, state Republicans were moving to ease the process of absentee voting — predominantly used by white voters then — by stripping requirements that absentee voters provide an excuse for why they couldn’t vote in person and exempting them from the new photo-identification requirement.Justice Department lawyers reviewed the proposals under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act and found that the new ID law would likely make voting disproportionately harder for Black citizens. The attorneys recommended that the George W. Bush administration block it.In a memo that the department’s political leadership ultimately disregarded, staff lawyers noted that a sponsor of the legislation had told them that she believed Black voters were likely to vote only when they were paid to do so, and that if the new law reduced their voting share it was only because it would limit opportunities for fraud.The memo also stated that the law’s sponsors defended the more lenient treatment of mail voting — like its exemption from the ID provision — by arguing that it was more secure than in-person voting because it produced a paper trail.Now, after an election year in which Mr. Trump repeatedly and falsely disparaged mail voting as rife with fraud, state Republicans are arguing that mail-in voting needs more restrictions.There is no new evidence supporting that assertion. But one thing did change in 2020: the increase in Black voters who availed themselves of absentee balloting, helping Democrats to dominate the mail-in ballot results during the presidential election.“It’s just really a sad day,” Mr. Small, from the Greater Gaines church, said. “It’s a very challenging time for all of us, just for the inalienable right to vote that we fought so hard for, and right now, they’re trying to turn back the clock to try to make sure it’s difficult,” he said.Pastor Clarke of St. Philip Monumental said the Republican effort to impose more restrictions could backfire, energizing an already active electorate.“Donald Trump woke us up,” he said. “There are more people in the congregation that are more aware and alert and have a heightened awareness to politics. So while we know that and we believe that his intentions were ill, we can honestly say that he has woken us up. That we will never be the same.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySupreme Court Case Could Limit Options to Fight Republican Voting RestrictionsThe Supreme Court on Tuesday heard arguments on an Arizona case that could further undermine the ability of the Voting Rights Act to protect access to the ballot.People lined up to vote at a polling place in Phoenix in November. Arizona is one of several states where Republican legislatures are drafting legislation to restrict voting access.Credit…Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesReid J. Epstein and March 3, 2021, 1:27 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — There was not much subtlety to the Republicans’ argument to the Supreme Court on Tuesday for allowing laws that effectively limit voting access for people of color.Overturning a restrictive Arizona law, said Michael A. Carvin, the lawyer representing the Republican Party of Arizona, “puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats. Politics is a zero-sum game, and every extra vote they get through unlawful interpretations of Section 2 hurts us,” referring to the part of the Voting Rights Act that is generally used to protect voting access for minority groups.“It’s the difference between winning an election 50-49 and losing,” he said.Mr. Carvin’s explanation, in response to a softball question from Justice Amy Coney Barrett about the Republican Party’s interest in a lawsuit brought by Democrats against Arizona, struck at the heart of the latest Supreme Court case that could have a major impact on states’ ability to curtail voting rights.At issue before the court are Arizona laws forbidding third-party collection of ballots, which Republicans derisively call harvesting, and another requiring election officials to discard ballots cast at the wrong precinct. The broader question is the future of the Voting Rights Act, and whether states will be allowed to restrict voting access unimpeded.Should the Republican argument prevail at the Supreme Court, where conservative justices hold a six-to-three majority, it could give the party’s lawmakers wide latitude to enact voting restrictions to eliminate early voting on Sundays, end third-party ballot collection and restrict who can receive an absentee ballot — all voting mechanisms Democratic lawyers argued would disproportionately curtail voting access to people of color.Republicans, in the era of former President Donald J. Trump, have made limiting access to voting a key provision of their political identity. Republicans in at least 43 states are trying to roll back laws increasing access to the ballot box that even some of them had once supported.In Washington and across the country, Republicans have adopted Mr. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, say voters don’t trust the system, and argue, despite numerous studies to the contrary, that easier access to voting inevitably leads to fraud.While Republican officials have for a generation proffered specious arguments about voter fraud affecting election results, the Trump era marks the first time there has been a party-wide, nationwide effort to limit access to the ballot for people of color and young voters — a population far more inclined to vote for Democrats.“You can’t build a foundation of lies and then use that foundation to disenfranchise voters, particularly voters of color,” said Tom Perez, the former Democratic National Committee chairman who prosecuted voting rights cases as head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division during the Obama administration. “We’re on really dangerous turf right now when you have Republicans fueling these laws on the basis of falsehoods and the courts are going to be a last resort.”In this case, the justices have a range of options. They could leave the existing law intact and rule narrowly that the Arizona case was wrongly decided. Arizona’s attorney general and a lawyer for the state’s Republican Party suggested on Tuesday that the court could also choose to exempt some parts of election law — such as a ballot-collection law that deals with how voting is conducted, rather than who votes — from Section 2 coverage.Or they could rule that a higher standard is needed to show that intentional discrimination or past injustices caused a violation — for example, requiring more substantial evidence of discrimination, or ruling that past discrimination no longer needs to be considered.Limiting what can be argued under the Voting Rights Act would cut off many legal avenues to challenge new voting restrictions passed by Republican lawmakers.Conservatives hold a six-to-three majority on the Supreme Court, which could lead to decisions that give Republicans wide latitude to enact voting restrictions.Credit…Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesLast week, Iowa legislators sent to Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, legislation that would cut a third of the state’s early-voting period and lop off an hour of Election Day voting. In Georgia, Republican lawmakers are aiming to sharply limit voting access on Sundays, when many Black voters follow church services with “souls to the polls” bus rides to cast ballots. And in Arizona, Republican lawmakers are backing bills to curtail the automatic mailing of absentee ballots to voters who skip elections, and trying to raise to 60 percent the threshold to pass citizen-led ballot referendums.Republicans in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have also pushed for new voting restrictions, though their Democratic governors are certain to veto any such proposals. The key legal tool in question at the Supreme Court is Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which governs after-the-fact challenges to state voting laws. Limiting its application — as the court did in 2013 with the Voting Rights Act’s requirement that some states receive Justice Department clearance before changing voting laws or drawing new legislative maps — could allow states to enact far more sweeping restrictions on voting, while increasing legal hurdles to overturn the new laws.Section 2 lawsuits have proven pivotal in striking down or modifying restrictions on people’s ability to cast ballots. Among them are a 2015 case overturning Texas’ strict voter ID law and a 2016 decision nullifying a North Carolina voting law, whose constraints ranged from strict ID requirements to limiting voter registration and early voting. In the latter case, an appeals court wrote that Republicans in the state legislature had used the law to target Black voters “with almost surgical precision.”“It would make it all the harder to stop some of these really dangerous voting laws,” said Stephen Spaulding, a senior counsel for public policy at Common Cause. “It would be an accelerant for further voter suppression.”Mark Brnovich, the Arizona attorney general who argued the case before the court, said Section 2 can only apply if there is a “substantial” disparity impacting voters of color, a higher standard than Democrats believe exists under the 14th and 15th Amendments. He said that absent the higher bar, Section 2 would “improperly inject race into all voting laws, and impede a state’s ability to run their elections.”Without the Voting Rights Act, Democrats have few tools to stop Republican-controlled states from limiting voting access.House Democrats on Wednesday are expected to pass H.R. 1, a bill to standardize federal election rules by overriding many of the restrictive voting laws enacted in the states and to dramatically expand voting access. But the proposal has little chance of proceeding through the Senate unless Democrats there agree to suspend or terminate the filibuster’s 60-vote requirement to pass most legislation.Though a majority of justices seemed inclined to uphold Arizona’s laws at the end of the nearly two-hour argument on Tuesday, it was not at all clear how broadly their ruling might impact Section 2, the last remaining pillar of the 1965 law, voting-rights experts said.One big reason is that the law says that whether the section is violated rests heavily on local circumstance, such as whether a law purporting to stop fraud was preceded by actual evidence of fraud. Another is that many violations do not rest on proof of intentional bias — which can be difficult or impossible to prove — but on evidence that the law in question perpetuates old injustices.The justices appeared on Tuesday to be grappling with how direct that link between an old injustice and a new violation needs to be. For example, a voting literacy test like those of the Jim Crow era might be equally applied to all voters, but it might disproportionately keep minorities from voting because an old injustice — like a segregated school system that gave Black voters a poorer education — caused them to fail. That is a clear link.Activists from Black Voters Matter worked to direct people to polling places in Georgia in January.Credit…Audra Melton for The New York TimesBut other laws, including the ones in Arizona, may affect minorities disproportionately, yet require a finer judgment as to why. One question in the argument on Tuesday was whether the evidence of intentional bias, including an inflammatory video alleging ballot fraud by Latinos, was sufficient to support a violation.In striking down the heart of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, the justices effectively said that the federal government no longer could hold veto power over voting laws in states with a history of discrimination because times had changed, and past discrimination in those states no longer was relevant.“Nobody struck down Section 5,” said Myrna Pérez, who directs the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center for Justice, referring to the clause that gave the government veto power known as pre-clearance. “Nobody said it was an overextension of Congress’s power. They just said it didn’t apply.”Few expect the court to go that far in this case. But a substantial weakening of the standards could make it much harder for plaintiffs to prove that a restriction on voting rights was a violation.In her closing statement on Tuesday, Jessica Ring Amunson, the lawyer for Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, urged the court to seek a higher vision of democracy than the “zero-sum” game the Republicans described. The country functions best, she said, when all eligible Americans have the right and access to vote.“We should actually want to ratchet up participation so that every eligible citizen who wants to vote can do so. Candidates and parties should be trying to win over voters on the basis of their ideas, not trying to remove voters from the electorate by imposing unjustified and discriminatory burdens,” she said.Speaking of the Republicans, Ms. Amunson concluded: “Unfortunately, petitioners have made clear that that is not their vision of democracy.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn PoliticsThe Brewing Voting Rights ClashRepublicans are reuniting — and re-energized — as they pursue a longstanding political goal.March 2, 2021, 6:47 p.m. ETCredit…Antonio de LucaThe 2020 election was a wild one. And under the strange circumstances, Republicans wound up turning against one another on an issue that tends to unite them: voting access and elections.Some Republican officials fought to restrict access to the ballot amid the pandemic, while others endorsed mail-in voting and other methods to make voting easier. After the election, some Republicans backed President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims of election fraud, while a number of state-level officials — such as Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia and his secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger — defended the integrity of their own election systems.But now that the election is behind us, Republicans are reuniting on this issue, leading efforts around the country to restrict access to the vote. And in many cases they’re weaponizing Trump’s fabrications from 2020 to justify doing it. In Georgia this week, the Republican-led state legislature is moving forward with a bill to restrict absentee voting and limit early voting on weekends.The G.O.P. has one big advantage here: a newly cemented 6-to-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, which is broadly seen as receptive to restrictions on voting, even if it didn’t support Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. The justices heard oral arguments today in a challenge to the Voting Rights Act stemming from policies in Arizona during the 2020 election, and the court appeared sympathetic to the Republican plaintiffs’ arguments.Democrats, meanwhile, are equally unified in their efforts to preserve widespread voting access, particularly in Black and brown communities that are most heavily targeted by restrictive voting laws. The House today held a debate on the For the People Act, known as H.R. 1, which among other things would create a basic bill of rights for voting access. The legislation is expected to pass the chamber tomorrow along party lines.To put this all in perspective, I called Wendy Weiser, who studies these issues as the director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at N.Y.U.’s law school. She took time out of a whirlwind news day on the voting front to answer a few questions for On Politics. The interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.Hi, Wendy. Let’s begin with the news from Georgia. What is the significance of the legislation making its way through the state legislature there, and is it part of a trend?The bill in Georgia is one of the most significant and restrictive voter suppression bills in the country, but it is not unique right now. We’ve been tracking the legislation to restrict and also to expand voting access across the country for over a decade, and right now we have well over 250 bills pending in 43 states across the county that would restrict access to voting. That is seven times the number of restrictive voting bills we saw at the same time last year. So it is a dramatic spike in the push to restrict access to voting.So we’ve seen this is a growing movement. It’s not brand-new this year, it wasn’t invented by Donald Trump, but it was certainly supercharged by his regressive attack on our voting systems. We’re seeing its impact in Georgia, but also across the country.Republicans have been talking about voter fraud, and attempting to limit access to the ballot, for many years. How much is the current surge in restrictive voting legislation related to Donald Trump and the conspiracy theories he pushed last year, during and after the campaign?Many of these bills are fueled by the same rhetoric and grievances that were driving the challenges to the 2020 election. In addition to expressly referencing the big lie about widespread voter fraud and that Trump actually won the election, they’re targeting the methods of voting that the Trump campaign was complaining about. So, for example, the single biggest subject of regressive voter legislation in this session — roughly half the bills — is mail voting.That is new this year. We’ve been tracking efforts to restrict access to voting for a very long time, and absentee voting has not been the subject of legislative attack before. It was the politicization of that issue in the 2020 election, principally by the Trump campaign and allies, that I think helped elevate that issue to a grievance level that would cause it to be the subject of legislative attack.The Supreme Court today heard oral arguments in a challenge to the Voting Rights Act, brought by the attorney general of Arizona. What is at stake in that case?On a narrow level, the case is challenging two provisions of an Arizona law that made it harder for voters of color in Arizona to participate in the election process, but the case’s significance is much broader. The plaintiffs and the Republican National Committee are actually arguing to dramatically scale back the strength of the nationwide protections against voting discrimination in the federal Voting Rights Act.About eight years ago, the Supreme Court gutted the most powerful provision of the Voting Rights Act, the preclearance provision, which applied to states with a history of discrimination. That led to disastrous outcomes across the country, but it did not invalidate the nationwide protections against discrimination in voting, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. So this is the next shoe, which I hope will not drop.At a time when voting rights in America are under significant attack, more than they have been in decades — an attack through racially targeted efforts to restrict access to voting — we need the protections of the Voting Rights Act more than ever. So this is absolutely the wrong direction to go in.With the Voting Rights Act in peril, Democrats in Congress are moving forward with legislation to ensure people’s access to the ballot. What are their proposals?There are two major pieces of voting rights legislation that are moving through Congress. The one that was not voted on today is called the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and it would restore the preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act, which requires a federal review of changes in certain states to see if they’re discriminatory. It would also make other improvements to the Voting Rights Act to make it more effective.The other bill, which was voted on today, is called the For the People Act, H.R. 1. It would create a baseline level of voter access rules that every American could rely on for federal elections. This one would address almost comprehensively the attacks on voting rights that we’re seeing in state legislatures across the country. So, for example, in many states we’re seeing attempts to eliminate no-excuse absentee voting. H.R. 1 would require all states to offer no-excuse absentee voting. Every state would then offer that best practice of voting access, and it would no longer be manipulated, election by election, by state legislators to target voters they don’t like.On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySupreme Court Seems Ready to Sustain Arizona Voting LimitsThe court also signaled that it could tighten the standards for using the Voting Rights Act to challenge all kinds of voting restrictions.Election workers counting ballots in Phoenix in November. The case before the Supreme Court could determine the fate of scores if not hundreds of laws addressing election rules in the coming years.Credit…Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesMarch 2, 2021Updated 6:35 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — The Supreme Court seemed ready on Tuesday to uphold two election restrictions in Arizona and to make it harder to challenge all sorts of limits on voting around the nation.In its most important voting rights case in almost a decade, the court for the first time considered how a crucial part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 applies to voting restrictions that have a disproportionate impact on members of minority groups. The court heard the case as disputes over voting rights have again become a flash point in American politics.The immediate question for the justices was whether two Arizona measures ran afoul of the 1965 law. One of the measures requires election officials to discard ballots cast at the wrong precinct. The other makes it a crime for campaign workers, community activists and most other people to collect ballots for delivery to polling places, a practice critics call “ballot harvesting.”Several members of the court’s conservative majority said the restrictions were sensible, commonplace and at least partly endorsed by a bipartisan consensus reflected in a 2005 report signed by former President Jimmy Carter and James A. Baker III, who served as secretary of state under President George Bush.The Biden administration, too, told the justices in an unusual letter two weeks ago that the Arizona measures appeared to be lawful. But the letter disavowed the Trump administration’s position that the relevant section of the Voting Rights Act should not be widely used to keep states from enacting more restrictive voting procedures.Much of the argument on Tuesday centered on that larger issue in the case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, No. 19-1257, of what standard courts should apply to challenges under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The court’s answer to that question could determine the fate of scores if not hundreds of laws addressing election rules in the coming years.As Republican-controlled state legislatures increasingly seek to impose restrictive new voting rules, Democrats and civil rights groups are turning to the courts to argue that Republicans are trying to suppress the vote, thwart the will of the majority and deny equal access to minority voters and others who have been underrepresented at the polls.“More voting restrictions have been enacted over the last decade than at any point since the end of Jim Crow,” Bruce V. Spiva, a lawyer for the Democratic National Committee, which is challenging the two Arizona measures, told the justices. “The last three months have seen an even greater uptick in proposed voting restrictions, many aimed squarely at the minority groups whose participation Congress intended to protect.”Though the Voting Rights Act seeks to protect minority voting rights, as a practical matter litigation under it tends to proceed on partisan lines. When Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked a lawyer for the Arizona Republican Party why his client cared about whether votes cast at the wrong precinct should be counted, he gave a candid answer.“Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats,” said the lawyer, Michael A. Carvin. “Politics is a zero-sum game, and every extra vote they get through unlawful interpretations of Section 2 hurts us.”Jessica R. Amunson, a lawyer for Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of state, a Democrat, said electoral contests should not turn on voting procedures.“Candidates and parties should be trying to win over voters on the basis of their ideas,” Ms. Amunson said, “not trying to remove voters from the electorate by imposing unjustified and discriminatory burdens.”Section 2 took on additional prominence after the Supreme Court in 2013 effectively struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act, its Section 5, which required prior federal approval of changes to voting procedures in parts of the country with a history of racial and other discrimination.Until then, Section 2, which allows after-the-fact challenges, had mostly been used in redistricting cases, where the question was whether voting maps had unlawfully diluted minority voting power. Its role in addressing the denial of the right to vote itself has been subject to much less attention.Over two hours of arguments by telephone, the justices struggled to identify a standard that would allow courts to distinguish lawful restrictions from improper ones.The court did not seem receptive to a rigorous test proposed by Mr. Carvin, the lawyer for the Arizona Republican Party, who said that ordinary election regulations are not subject to challenges under Section 2. Most justices appeared to accept that regulations that place substantial burdens on minority voters could run afoul of the law.But there was some dispute about what counted as substantial and what justifications states could offer for their restrictions. The court’s more conservative members seemed inclined to require significant disparities unconnected to socioeconomic conditions and to accept the need to combat even potential election fraud as a sufficient reason to impose restrictions on voting.Justice Elena Kagan tested the limits of Mr. Carvin’s argument, asking whether much longer lines at polling places in minority neighborhoods could be challenged under the law. He said yes. He gave the same answer when asked about locating all polling places at country clubs far from minority neighborhoods.But he said cutting back on Sunday voting, even if heavily relied on by Black voters, was lawful, as was restricting voting to business hours on Election Day.Mark Brnovich, Arizona’s attorney general, a Republican, proposed a vaguer standard, saying that the disparate effect on minority voters must be substantial and caused by the challenged practice rather than some other factor.Asked by Justice Kagan whether the four hypothetical restrictions she had posed to Mr. Carvin would survive under that test, Mr. Brnovich did not give a direct answer.He did say that the number of ballots disqualified for having been cast in the wrong district was very small and that Arizona’s overall election system makes it easy to vote.Ms. Amunson, the lawyer for Arizona’s secretary of state, urged the justices to strike down the challenged restrictions.“Arizona already has a law prohibiting fraudulent ballot collection,” she said by way of example. “What this law does is it criminalizes neighbors helping neighbors deliver ballots with up to two years in jail.”Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. asked her a series of hypothetical questions about early voting, ballot forms and deadlines for mailed ballots. Ms. Amunson gave a general answer.“You have to take a functional view of the political process and look to a holistic view of how it is actually affecting the voter on the ground,” she said.Justice Alito appeared unsatisfied. “Well, those are a lot of words,” he said. “I really don’t understand what they mean.”Several justices suggested that most of the standards proposed by the lawyers before them were quite similar. “The longer this argument goes on,” Justice Kagan said, “the less clear I am as to how the parties’ standards differ.”Justice Stephen G. Breyer echoed the point. “Lots of the parties on both sides are pretty close on the standards,” he said.Justices Kagan and Breyer, both members of the court’s liberal wing, may have been playing defense, hoping the court’s decision, expected by July, would leave Section 2 more or less unscathed.But Justice Alito said he was wary of making “every voting rule vulnerable to attack under Section 2.”“People who are poor and less well educated on balance probably will find it more difficult to comply with just about every voting rule than do people who are more affluent and have had the benefit of more education,” he said.Justice Barrett appeared to agree. “All election rules,” she said, “are going to make it easier for some to vote than others.”But Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said he could think of two workable standards for applying the law. “One factor would be if you’re changing to a new rule that puts minorities in a worse position than they were under the old rule,” he said, “and a second factor would be whether a rule is commonplace in other states that do not have a similar history of racial discrimination.”Last year, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled that both Arizona restrictions violated Section 2 because they disproportionately disadvantaged minority voters.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCPAC Takeaways: Trump Dominates, and DeSantis and Noem Stand OutAt their three-day gathering, pro-Trump conservatives tried to turn “cancel culture” into their new “fake news” and spent little time on policy (either their own or President Biden’s).Former President Donald Trump spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Sunday. Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesShane Goldmacher and Feb. 28, 2021Updated 8:37 p.m. ETAny lingering belief that Donald J. Trump would fade from the political scene like other past presidents evaporated fully on Sunday as he spoke for more than 90 minutes in a grievance-filled and self-promoting address that sought to polish up his presidential legacy, take aim at his enemies and tease his political future.Here are six takeaways from the first major Republican gathering of the post-Trump era, the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla.Trump has (almost) total dominance.“I am not starting a new party,” Mr. Trump declared, nixing rumors and making news in the first moments of the first speech of his post-presidency.And why would he? Mr. Trump remains the most influential Republican politician in the nation. The three-day CPAC gathering in Orlando showed how fully the Republican Party has been remade in his image in the five years since he boycotted the conference in 2016 en route to capturing the party’s nomination.In a meandering speech guided by a teleprompter and interrupted with cheering that at times read more obligatory than enthusiastic, Mr. Trump lashed out at President Biden and outlined his vision of a culture- and immigration-focused Republican Party while relitigating his specific grievances from 2020.Mr. Trump named every Republican who voted for his impeachment. “Get rid of them all,” he said. And he predicted a Republican would win the White House in 2024. “Who, who, who will that be, I wonder?” he mused.The speech came right after Mr. Trump won a CPAC 2024 presidential straw poll, finishing with 55 percent of the vote — more than double the percentage of his closest runner-up. But that victory was dampened by the fact that only 68 percent of the attendees at the conference said they wanted him to run again.A second straw poll, without Mr. Trump, was carried by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who received 43 percent on his home turf, followed by Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota with 11 percent.Those results showcased the challenge that senators face in edging ahead of governors in the 2024 pack of potential presidential candidates. Both Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Noem highlighted their efforts to keep the economy open during the coronavirus pandemic, which proved a more popular résumé point than the legislative fights that senators in Washington have been engaged in.‘Cancel culture’ is the new ‘fake news.’In his first presidential bid, Mr. Trump adopted “fake news” as a rallying cry against the traditional news media and then effectively and relentlessly deployed it to position himself as the sole arbiter of truth for his supporters.The lineup of CPAC speakers over the weekend showed how thoroughly a new pair of catchphrases — “cancel culture” and the “woke mob” — are animating a Republican Party that, beyond supporting Mr. Trump, appears increasingly centered on defining itself in opposition to the left.“Didn’t anybody tell you?” Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri began his CPAC speech. “You’re supposed to be canceled.”The crowd cheered as “cancel culture” served throughout the weekend as shorthand for bashing the news media, railing against the tech industry (in particular, Twitter’s and Facebook’s decisions to bar Mr. Trump from their platforms), and spreading fear about the decline of conservative and religious values in American popular culture.Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, one of his party’s most adroit culture warriors, summarized the annoyance and alienation felt by attendees at the right-wing gathering because of the continuing pandemic.“You can French kiss the guy next to you yelling ‘Abolish the police’ and no one will get infected,” he mocked. “But if you go to church and say ‘Amazing grace,’ everyone is going to die.”Audience members cheering Mr. Trump.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesA ‘rigged’ 2020 is now a G.O.P. article of faith.T.W. Shannon, a Republican from Oklahoma, was the first to say it. Speaking Friday morning on a panel called “Tolerance Reimagined: The Angry Mob and Violence in Our Streets,” Mr. Shannon said the reason pro-Trump demonstrators stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 was that “they felt hopeless.”And that, he said, was “because of a rigged election.”The election was not rigged, of course, but by the end of CPAC it was clear that the lie Mr. Trump had promoted vigorously had become canon among the base of the Republican Party. On Sunday, the conference’s straw poll results revealed that 62 percent of attendees ranked “election integrity” as the most important issue facing the country.For those who tuned into Mr. Hawley’s speech, this was probably unsurprising: Mr. Hawley, who was the first Senate Republican to announce his plans to object to the Electoral College certification, electrified the CPAC audience when he reminded them of his defiance.“On Jan. 6, I objected to the Electoral College certification — maybe you heard about it,” Mr. Hawley said with a wry grin. People erupted in applause.In interviews, multiple CPAC attendees were adamant that widespread voter fraud had led to the election of Mr. Biden — and some inadvertently suggested the long-term consequences this could pose for the party.Pamela Roehl, 55, who traveled to the conference from Illinois, said some of her pro-Trump friends had written off civic engagement for good. “They voted for Trump, and they said they’re not going to vote again, because they just feel like it’s so tainted,” she said. “And that is just so sad.”There was little interest in policy — whether Biden’s or the Republican Party’s.As the conference began, House Democrats were preparing to approve a coronavirus relief package worth nearly $2 trillion that was opposed by every House Republican. But inside the Hyatt Regency in Orlando, it was hard to find many conservatives who cared.CPAC in past years has served, at minimum, as a forum for conservatives to unite in opposition to a Democratic policy agenda. But most speakers over the weekend won applause by channeling the preoccupation with personality over policy that animated the party during Mr. Trump’s presidency. The result was an event in which conservatives signaled their lack of interest not just in mobilizing against Mr. Biden’s policies, but also in debating the finer points of their own.Mr. DeSantis suggested that the current threat posed by the left was too dangerous for conservatives to prioritize policy discussions.“We can sit around and have academic debates about conservative policy — we can do that,” he said. “But the question is, when the Klieg lights get hot, when the left comes after you: Will you stay strong, or will you fold?”In an illustration of how Mr. Trump has transformed the party, there was strikingly little mention of curbing spending at a moment when congressional Democrats are moving to restore earmarks. And while CPAC attendees ranked immigration as the third most important issue facing the country, few speakers discussed specific policy proposals to shape the party’s stance on the issue beyond continuing to support Mr. Trump’s border wall.Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota drew one of the most enthusiastic receptions at CPAC.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesKristi Noem is hailed as ‘a female Trump.’Ms. Noem, who came in second to Mr. DeSantis in the CPAC straw poll without Mr. Trump, was one of the standout speakers of the weekend, delivering a staunchly pro-Trump message and highlighting the anti-lockdown and anti-mask policies that in the past year have made her a darling of the base of the Republican Party.She jolted to stardom in Republican circles last year when she refused to issue a lockdown order for South Dakota or to enforce a mask mandate. Instead, she advocated “washing your hands and making good decisions.”South Dakota now has the country’s eighth-highest death rate from Covid-19.Ms. Noem received a standing ovation at CPAC when she boasted that she had never ordered a “single business or church to close,” and another one when she attacked Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert.In the hours leading up to her speech on Saturday, many attendees praised Ms. Noem as their favorite Republican — apart from Mr. Trump, of course.“I like Kristi Noem because she fights back,” said Sany Dash, who sold pro-Trump merchandise at the conference. “I feel like she’s a female Trump, except not crass or rude. ”The Republican ‘civil war’ remains very much uncanceled.Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who runs the Republican political committee trying to win back the Senate in 2022, tried to downplay any intraparty disagreements and urged activists to focus on opposing the Democratic agenda.The problem is that some of his party’s biggest names — including and especially Mr. Trump — are focused first on exacting revenge for those who strayed from the Trump party line on impeachment.Donald Trump Jr. excoriated Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the top-ranking Republican to vote to impeach his father, as aggressively as he did any Democrat in his speech. Mr. Trump on Friday announced that one of his first 2022 endorsements would be for the primary opponent of Representative Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, another Republican who voted for impeachment. The mere mention of Senator Mitt Romney’s name drew derision.In his own speech, Mr. Trump named every Republican who voted for his impeachment in the House and for conviction in the Senate, focusing special attention on Ms. Cheney, whom he called a “warmonger.”But even if there are critical parts of the Republican apparatus at war, the activist flank of the party remains firmly behind Mr. Trump. Or, as he put it, “The only division is between a handful of Washington, D.C., establishment political hacks and everybody else.”There were no more surefire applause lines than those that heaped praise on the former president.When Donald Trump Jr. jokingly called the gathering “TPAC” instead of CPAC — “It’s what it feels like, guys!” he said — it felt less like an awkward joke and more a statement of 2021 reality.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Supreme Court Test for What’s Left of the Voting Rights ActWhile state legislatures consider new voting restrictions to address claims of election fraud, the justices will hear arguments on what kind of legal scrutiny such laws should face.The Supreme Court has never considered how a particular provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 applies to policies that restrict the vote.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesFeb. 28, 2021, 12:24 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — As Republican state lawmakers around the nation are working furiously to enact laws making it harder to vote, the Supreme Court on Tuesday will hear its most important election case in almost a decade, one that will determine what sort of judicial scrutiny those restrictions will face.The case centers on a crucial remaining provision of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race. Civil rights groups are nervous that the court, now with a six-justice conservative majority, will use the opportunity to render that provision, Section 2, toothless.The provision has taken on greater importance in election disputes since 2013, when the court effectively struck down the heart of the 1965 law, its Section 5, which required prior federal approval of changes to voting procedures in parts of the country with a history of racial and other discrimination.But Chief Justice John G. Roberts’s majority opinion in the 5-to-4 decision, Shelby County v. Holder, said Section 2 would remain in place to protect voting rights by allowing litigation after the fact.“Section 2 is permanent, applies nationwide and is not at issue in this case,” he wrote.But it is more than a little opaque, and the Supreme Court has never considered how it applies to voting restrictions.The new case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, No. 19-1257, was filed by the Democratic National Committee in 2016 to challenge voting restrictions in Arizona. Lawyers for civil rights groups said they hoped the justices would not use the case to chip away at the protections offered by Section 2.“It would be just really out of step for what this country needs right now for the Supreme Court to weaken or limit Section 2,” said Myrna Pérez, a lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice, which submitted a brief supporting the challengers.Civil rights lawyers have a particular reason to be wary of Chief Justice Roberts. When he was a young lawyer in the Reagan administration, he unsuccessfully worked to oppose the expansion of Section 2, which had initially covered only intentional discrimination, to address practices that had discriminatory results.The Arizona case concerns two kinds of voting restrictions. One requires election officials to discard ballots cast at the wrong precinct. The other makes it a crime for campaign workers, community activists and most other people to collect ballots for delivery to polling places, a practice critics call “ballot harvesting.” The law makes exceptions for family members, caregivers and election officials.“I can’t believe the court would strike down common-sense election integrity measures,” Mark Brnovich, the state’s attorney general, said in an interview. In his brief, he wrote that “a majority of states require in-precinct voting, and about 20 states limit ballot collection.”Whether the particular restrictions challenged in the case should survive is in some ways not the central issue. The Biden administration, for instance, told the justices in an unusual letter two weeks ago that the Arizona measures did not violate Section 2. But the letter disavowed the Trump administration’s interpretation of Section 2, which would limit its availability to test the lawfulness of all sorts of voting restrictions.Section 2 bars any voting procedure that “results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race.” That happens, the provision goes on, when, “based on the totality of circumstances,” racial minorities “have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.”Dissenting in the Shelby County case, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Section 2 was not nearly as valuable as Section 5.A polling site in Phoenix in 2016. The case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, was filed by the Democratic National Committee that year to challenge voting restrictions in Arizona.Credit…Max Whittaker for The New York Times“Litigation occurs only after the fact, when the illegal voting scheme has already been put in place and individuals have been elected pursuant to it, thereby gaining the advantages of incumbency,” she wrote. “An illegal scheme might be in place for several election cycles before a Section 2 plaintiff can gather sufficient evidence to challenge it. And litigation places a heavy financial burden on minority voters.”While Section 5 was available, Section 2 was used mostly in redistricting cases, where the question was whether voting maps had unlawfully diluted minority voting power. Its role in testing restrictions on the denial of the right to vote itself has been subject to much less attention.But Paul M. Smith, a lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center, which submitted a brief supporting the challengers, said lower courts had worked out a sensible framework to identify restrictions that violate Section 2.“It is not enough that a rule has a racially disparate impact,” he said. “That disparity must be related to, and explained by, the history of discrimination in the jurisdiction. Our hope is that the court will recognize the importance of maintaining this workable test, which plays an essential role in reining in laws that operate to burden voting by Blacks or Latinos.”The two sets of lawyers defending the measures in Arizona did not agree on what standard the Supreme Court should adopt to sustain the challenged restrictions. Mr. Brnovich, the state attorney general, said the disparate effect on minority voters must be substantial and caused by the challenged practice rather than some other factor. Lawyers for the Arizona Republican Party took a harder line, saying that race-neutral election regulations that impose ordinary burdens on voting are not subject at all to challenges under Section 2.Last year, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled that both Arizona restrictions violated Section 2 because they disproportionately disadvantaged minority voters.In 2016, Black, Latino and Native American voters were about twice as likely to cast ballots in the wrong precinct as were white voters, Judge William A. Fletcher wrote for the majority in the 7-to-4 decision. Among the reasons for this, he said, were “frequent changes in polling locations; confusing placement of polling locations; and high rates of residential mobility.”Similarly, he wrote, the ban on ballot collectors had an outsize effect on minority voters, who use ballot collection services far more than white voters because they are more likely to be poor, older, homebound or disabled; to lack reliable transportation, child care and mail service; and to need help understanding voting rules.Judge Fletcher added that “there is no evidence of any fraud in the long history of third-party ballot collection in Arizona.”In dissent, four judges wrote that the state’s restrictions were commonplace, supported by common sense and applied neutrally to all voters.Lawmakers were entitled to try to prevent potential fraud, Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain wrote. “Given its interest in addressing its valid concerns of voter fraud,” he wrote, “Arizona was free to enact prophylactic measures even though no evidence of actual voter fraud was before the legislature.”The appeals court stayed its ruling, and the restrictions were in place for the election in November.Mr. Brnovich will argue before the justices on Tuesday in the case that bears his name. He said the Ninth Circuit’s approach “would jeopardize almost every voting integrity law in almost every state.”Leigh Chapman, a lawyer with the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which filed a brief supporting the challengers, said the Supreme Court faced a crossroad.“Especially in the absence of Section 5,” she said, “Section 2 plays an essential role in advancing the federal commitment to protecting minority voters and ensuring that they have an equal opportunity to participate in the political process.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
