In a 6-3 vote, justices reversed a lower court ruling on so-called “ballot harvesting” in which a second party collects the ballots of other votes. A second state law states that ballots cast in the wrong precinct will not be allowed, and the high court defended that requirement, too.
The lawsuit that fought the new law claimed that both rules are racially discriminatory, and a federal appears court in famously-liberal San Francisco agreed the voting requirements disproportionately affected black, Hispanic and Native American voters in violation of the historic Voting Rights Act. The high court disagreed.
Late news from SCOTUS ...The U.S. Supreme Court decided on Friday that it will hear a case brought by families from Maine who want to use a state tuition program to send their children to religious schools. More details... |
Justice Samuel Alito wrote for a conservative majority that the state's interest in the integrity of elections justified the measures.
“If we have reached the point in America where banning ballot harvesting and voting out-of-precinct are considered racist threats to the republic,” writer Ben Shapiro commented online, “we have run out of actual racist threats to the republic.”
"Thursday's Supreme Court decision was simply a victory for election integrity," observes Lindsey Curnutte of Heritage Action, the politically active arm of The Heritage Foundation. "It really shows that these voting safeguards are constitutional, and what we're saying is more states need to enact these provisions going forward, (so) this is going to be really good news for states like Georgia."
The Department of Justice announced in June it is suing the state of Georgia over its new election laws.
