The high court will hear arguments over banning third parties from turning in ballots.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments over Arizona’s ban on allowing third parties to deliver ballots and on out-of-precinct voting after a federal appeals court struck down the state’s measure for violating the Voting Rights Act. Under Arizona law, so-called « ballot harvesting » is banned: only a family member, household member or caregiver is allowed to return a voter’s absentee ballot. State and national Democrats first sued the battleground state over the restrictions ahead of the 2016 election, claiming the state’s policy of discarding ballots cast in the wrong precinct and imposing criminal penalties on people collecting and delivering other Arizonans’ ballots discriminated against the state’s Native American, Hispanic, and African American citizens. First rejected by a district court, the San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit Appeals Court agreed in January with Democrats, ruling that they had shown that the laws « imposed a significant disparate burden » and had been passed because of « false, race-based claims of ballot collection fraud.
