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The Arizona Supreme Court has delivered a crucial ruling on voting measures that will have major implications for the state’s elections.
The state’s Supreme Court ruled that a bill requiring the state to make an “active” early voting list out of its Permanent Early Voting List, eliminating “infrequent” voters from it, is legal.
This means that going forward, only voters who have voted in at least two of the past three general elections will be automatically registered to vote.
The court’s ruling is a victory for Republicans in the state who have long advocated for stricter voter registration laws. Democrats, on the other hand, argue that such measures disproportionately impact minority and low-income voters.
The court ruled that a ballot initiative that would have made it easier to register to vote and to cast a ballot was unconstitutional. The proposition would have also allowed early voting and same-day registration.
The state was also required to abandon a law that would have required voters to produce proof of citizenship when they register. In 2004, the state legislature passed this requirement.
The ruling is a victory for election officials and for those who support strict voter ID laws. Opponents of the measures say that they will make it more difficult for people to vote.
The court’s decision is likely to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The measures in question are Senate Bill 1097, which requires proof of citizenship when registering to vote, and House Bill 2305, which makes it a felony to collect early ballots.
Both measures were passed by the Republican-controlled legislature and signed into law by Governor Doug Ducey in 2016.
Democrats challenged the measures in court, arguing that they violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution.
However, the state’s Supreme Court has determined that the restrictions are constitutional and do not violate the Equal Protection Clause, in a 4-3 decision published Monday.
This is a major victory for Republicans in Arizona, who have been fighting to keep these measures in place. It is also a blow to Democrats who had hoped to strike them down.
The measures in question included same-day voter registration, the removal of Arizona’s “ballot harvesting ban,” and “voter registration with minimal identification, such as a pay stub.”
The measures, which would have made it harder to vote in Arizona, were strongly opposed by the Biden administration.
The court’s ruling is a victory for voting rights advocates and a setback for Republicans who have been trying to make it harder to vote in many states.
The measures that were struck down by the court would have excluded “electors who don’t choose the president selected by Arizona’s presidential election,” removed “the 30-day residency requirement in order to vote,” and made it “harder to cancel voter registrations of inactive voters,” among other things.
The Biden Department of Justice had expressed opposition to a statute that GOP Gov. Doug Ducey passed earlier this year mandating voters to produce proof of citizenship to cast a ballot in federal elections.
