Posted on 03/24/2021 8:06:24 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Do federal law and the U.S. Constitution prohibit states from enacting commonsense voting requirements designed to protect the integrity of the electoral process, apply to everyone, and impose no significant burden? The Supreme Court tackled this question several weeks ago when it heard oral arguments in a case entitled Brnovich v. Democrat National Committee.
Democrats are challenging the legality of two measures used by Arizona to ensure a free and fair electoral process. The first, known as the “out of precinct policy” requires individuals who vote in-person to cast their respective ballots in their designated election location.
The second policy limits who may handle mail ballots to the individual voter, his or her close family member, mail carriers, and electoral officials, a policy that effectively bans groups who target vulnerable populations from engaging in ballot harvesting. Democrats allege these policies have a disparate impact on minorities and both place an undue burden on the right to vote. An en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit court of appeals agreed.
In opposing Arizona, Democrats ignore the fact that the vote-by-mail process contains opportunities for fraud not present in traditional, in-person voting. Ballots are sometimes delivered and left unsecured in mailboxes in apartment buildings, assisted living facilities, and other highly populated locations.
As such, opportunities to illicitly collect and complete these ballots abound. Furthermore, sophisticated political organizations train and deploy operatives to visit these communities and collect ballots, exerting a hefty influence on vulnerable voters in the process.
The issue here is whether states may enact even the most basic and obvious protections for a system fundamental and necessary for the preservation of our democracy. The alternative is that elected representatives deciding the time, place, and manner of elections (as delegated by the U.S. Constitution) will be replaced by unelected judges seizing more power and imposing their wills on the people.
If the Supreme Court doesn’t overturn the Ninth Circuit’s decision, any protection that states use to ensure the integrity of the voting process will be in doubt. A well-funded and sophisticated cadre of attorneys stands ready to initiate challenges to such traditional measures as requiring receipt of mail ballots by election day, requiring mail voters to pay for postage for ballots, and requiring witness verification for mail ballots.
Until a few years ago, both Republicans and Democrats agreed that voting by mail posed inherent risks, requiring state-level prohibitions on ballot harvesting. In 2005, a blue-ribbon committee headed by President Jimmy Carter and Secretary of State James Baker issued a report warning of the increased risk of fraud in mail voting.
It concluded when voting at home or in nursing homes, voters are susceptible to pressure and intimidation. It also found third-party organizations can operate illicit “vote-buying schemes” that are “far more difficult to detect when citizens vote by mail.”
After extensive hearings and due deliberation, the Arizona legislature passed — and the governor signed — its law limiting who could handle mail ballots. The law prevents fraud and ensures confidence in the legitimacy of the election.
Despite denials from the left, ballot trafficking occurs. In 2018, a congressional committee found “ballot brokers” in California identified and targeted groups hoping to exploit the electoral process. In another well-known case, ballot trafficking adversely affected the outcome of a congressional race in North Carolina.
During the Supreme Court’s oral arguments, several justices sought to identify at what point, if any, facially neutral voter protections violate federal law and the Constitution. They wrestled with questions about how much courts should consider the intent behind a law and whether, as opponents to reasonable election integrity argue, a single legislator’s racially charged language during the bill’s deliberation can be imputed to the entire legislative body. These questions will need to be answered before the court can come to any resolution.
How the Supreme Court resolves Brnovich will transform the power states have under the Constitution’s Art. I, Sec. 2 to supervise elections. The stakes are high. This case, coupled with efforts in the U.S. Congress to nationalize election laws, threatens to permanently undermine state efforts to ensure election integrity.
The House recently passed H.R. 1, a bill that removes the authority of the states to regulate elections and federalizes the entire process. In the coming weeks, look for extensive debate in the Senate about Washington’s role in the electoral process with extensive pressure from the White House to amplify the role of the federal government.
The left has a goal: elections with no protections. Worryingly, a definitive striking down of Arizona’s ballot harvesting provision would clear the way for a national takeover through H.R. 1.
A decision on this case is expected later this spring or early this summer. In the meantime, while state legislatures are working to enact new voting protections to restore confidence in the electoral system, all of these measures are in jeopardy should the Supreme Court fail to overturn the Ninth Circuit’s decision.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Michael J. O’Neill is the Assistant General Counsel at Landmark Legal Foundation.
Roberts will do as instructed by his masters.
Nothing would surprise me with this Gutless Justices.
Sorry pal - it’s in the constitution. States have exclusive rights to determine their voting laws - including electors.
Short of an amendment to the constitution the feds have no power here.
Good thing we have a conservative SCOTUS. s/
Good luck with that.
Sorry pal - The Constitution has become like toilet paper to most of the SCOTUS justices.
Like the Constitution has any relevance......../s
The world has learned over the last few months that there’s not a court in this nation that can be depended upon to uphold the rule of law.
This is a total non-sequitur and I don't know what it's doing in this article. It cuts against the other arguments
AZ has had no-excuse vote by mail for 20 years and even before Covid 80% of voters used it. It's extremely popular in the state and there isn't an effort underway to eliminate it.
American-Backstabber Roberts is getting morse coded
instruction from Malta. Black smoke expected as usual.
If Gorsuch, Kavanagh and Barrett cave on this case they are completely in the tank for the Deep State voter fraud. Nothing they can do will reverse their cowardly and treasonous refusal to rule on the clear Constitutional violations that took place in many of the swing states that decided the 2020 election, but they will at least give us a glimmer of hope that future elections could be made more secure through legislative action by Republican controlled legislatures. If SCOTUS permits State courts and/or their Secretary of State to rewrite election laws (as happened in Pennsylvania, Georgia and other states), then they will likely also uphold HR 1. America has one foot in the grave. This decision will either give hope to the disenfranchised voters or be America’s last rites.
Moving forward 57 years, the arguments used by liberals relative to ballot access parallel those used with regard to poll taxes and literacy tests. The precedent for Federal intervention was established in the Great Society era.
Could a state, say, pass a law saying that there will be only one polling place in a state, and that will only be open for ten minutes on election day?
This is the whole ball of wax.
I dont want them to just fix it for 22.. I want them to right this stolen election. I want them to carry Joe and jill out and put the voters choice back in.
I keep going back to Normandy.. young men.. rode those boats to the edge of the ocean and then walked in water and sand to the shore..KNOWING Germans were on the hill .. guns aimed at them as they walked carrying heavy gear.. stepping over dead and wounded American soldiers... can’t help the wounded and must take the guns of the dead.. if you can grab it on the run.. bullets already coming from the hill...
Getting off the boat.. scared like never before.. death all around.. trying to get enough men ashore...
Today there are not many left with nerves of steel and doing what all that training was for... and praying.
where are the men who should have stood in the gap for President Trump ... lazy.. scared of losing that precious position...
>>Sorry pal - it’s in the constitution. States have exclusive rights to determine their voting laws - including electors.<<
The SC just made that ruling in October of last year, Gorsuch wrote those very words in the decision.
The last election saw multiple state violate that by allowing governors, judges and secretaries of state to enact new voting rules.
The governors throwing open mailin ballots is different - in almost all cases it was a violation of those states laws - but were approved by those states supreme courts.
For better or worse - the SC punted because they didn’t want to get involved in the state’s sovereignty.
We’ll see if they change their tune now...
I am of the opinion that the Constitution specifically enumerates State Legislators with the authority to regulate their own elections. But how does this resolve against Congress and the supremacy clause?
My opinion is that when a group or citizen is specifically empowered under the Constitution, that enumeration trumps the supremacy clause. This means that in federal elections, the state, representing the state’s interests are EQUAL to the Congress representing the federal interests. States are not empowered to override the constitution, States must abide by any law past by Congress that does not impact the State’s authority.
For example, States have a vested interest in making sure that the voting rolls accurate represent citizens and residence of that state. Congress can not restrict a state from cleaning up (purging) voter rolls .... as long as the rules of the purging are in alignment with the Constitution.
I believe that the “test” for any such conflict should be the doctrine of strict scrutiny. Strict scrutiny will often be invoked in an equal protection claim. For a court to apply strict scrutiny, the legislature must either have passed a law that infringes upon a fundamental right or involves a suspect classification. Suspect classifications include race, national origin, religion, and alienage. In this case, under the classification of alienage which I would expand to citizenship and the rights (voting) held by the citizens of a state.
As this deals with the rights of citizens to express their will via legislators and that the Constitution has enumerated that right, then, Strict Scrutiny should be applied (a challenged policy in which the court presumes the policy to be invalid unless the government can demonstrate a compelling interest to justify the policy)
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