Supreme Court Upholds Restrictive Arizona Voting Laws

Poor People's Campaign Marches Against McConnell And Manchin In Washington, DC

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The Supreme Court upheld two voting laws in Arizona that activists claim made it harder for minorities to cast their ballots. The High Court ruled that the two laws do not violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The first law was passed in 2016 to prevent ballot harvesting and allowed only voters, their family members, or their caregivers to collect and deliver a ballot that had been filled out. The other law requires election officials to throw out any ballots that were cast in the wrong precinct.

The decision was 6-3. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito admitted that while the law may make it more difficult for people to vote, "mere inconvenience cannot be enough to demonstrate a violation."

He also admitted that the law may have a different impact on minority and non-minority voters but said the law still gives everybody an equal opportunity to vote.

"But the mere fact there is some disparity in impact does not necessarily mean that a system is not equally open or does not give everyone an equal opportunity to vote," Alito explained.

Justice Stephen Breyer, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and Justice Elena Kagan dissented.

"What is tragic here 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.' I respectfully dissent," Kagan wrote in her dissenting opinion.


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