In a 6-3 Alito decision where all the Supreme Court's conservatives sided with the state of Arizona, the Roberts Court declared that Arizona's GOP had every right to restrict out-of-precinct voting and ballot harvesting, and that of course they weren't violations of the Voting Right Act, no siree.
The court upheld two provisions of the Arizona law. The first provision says in-person ballots cast at the wrong precinct on Election Day must be wholly discarded. Another provision restricts a practice known as "ballot collection," and says only family caregivers, mail carriers and election officials can deliver another person's completed ballot to a polling place.
"In light of the principles set out above, neither Arizona's out-of-precinct rule nor its ballot-collection law violates §2 of the VRA," Alito wrote. "Arizona's out-of-precinct rule enforces the requirement that voters who choose to vote in person on election day must do so in their assigned precincts. Having to identify one's own polling place and then travel there to vote does not exceed the "usual burdens of voting.'"
The case comes as several Republican-led states, encouraged by former President Donald Trump's unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud, are considering more restrictive laws and Democrats are fighting a frantic battle in courts to combat what President Joe Biden has called an "assault on democracy."
So of course your vote gets tossed out completely if you vote in the wrong precinct. And of course, Arizona Republicans are doing everything they can to make sure that Black and brown voters vote in the wrong precinct. It's the new Jim Crow, whee!
The bottom line is that states are basically free to pass whatever voting restrictions they want to, because this court will never rule that they are obvious suppression efforts of Black voters.
It's open season on your voting rights, and the VRA is officially all but dead from a legal standpoint. We're right back to 1898 and Williams v. Mississippi.
Even worse, the Roberts Court handed down a decision that struck down California's state law requiring donor disclosure to super PACs on the same 6-3 lines, saying that was not only unconstitutional, but that it was clearly political in nature and obviously designed to hurt wealthy donors.
The Supreme Court on Thursday invalidated a California rule that requires charitable organizations to disclose the names of contributors in a case that could impact the future of "dark money" politics.The opinion was 6-3 along conservative-liberal lines.
"The upshot is that California casts a dragnet for sensitive donor information from tens of thousands of charities each year, even though that information will become relevant in only a small number of cases involving filed complaints," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.
Campaign finance reform had expressed fear that such a ruling could eventually lead to more anonymous money -- called dark money -- to enter the political sphere.
The case had pitted the interest of charities to maintain the privacy of their donors against the states' interest in policing charitable fraud.
California mandated that non-profit charities that solicit donations in the state identify their substantial donors to the California attorney general. The same information already goes to the IRS -- found on the IRS Form 990. The Schedule B attachment required the organizations to report the names and addresses of their largest contributors. Failure to comply had the potential to lead to late fees and suspicion of their registration as a charitable organization.
Roberts ruled that the fraud policing was a purely political pretext that violated the rights of wealthy people to exercise their cash-based free speech. Oh no!
Actual votes can be thrown out on a technicality, but heaven forbid we ever have millionaires reveal they gave money to politicians in order to control them. One is perfectly legal, the other is a VIOLATION OF THE CONSTITUTION AND GOD HIMSELF.
But her emails, I guess.
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