The U.S. Supreme Court on Saturday reinstated an Arizona law that makes it a felony to collect early ballots, stepping into a contentious political issue days before the presidential election and dealing a blow to Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts.
The unsigned order from the nation’s highest court overturns an appeals court decision from a day earlier that blocked the new law and drew celebration from Democrats. Groups immediately launched renewed efforts to help voters deliver their ballots to the polls, then stopped after the high-court ruling.
The Supreme Court decision called into question what happens to ballots that were legally collected from voters in the 20 hours that the law was blocked.
Arizona filed an emergency appeal hours after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the law Friday. Justice Anthony Kennedy referred the case to the entire Supreme Court, and the court issued a brief order overturning the appeals court. The 9th Circuit will now consider the law in a January session that it set when it blocked the law.
The high court decision is unusual because it takes at least five votes to issue such an order and the court is split 4-4 along conservative-liberal lines after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia this year. That means at least one of the court’s liberals agreed to allow the law to go back into effect, and no dissents were noted in the order.
The case is one of a slew of election-related challenges filed by Democrats across the nation in the lead-up to Tuesday’s election. Democrats in six states asked federal judges to block what they alleged were voter intimidation tactics planned by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, his backers or the state and national GOP. A judge in Ohio issued an injunction blocking the tactics Friday, but judges in Arizona and Nevada refused to do so. Lawsuits in Michigan and Pennsylvania are awaiting hearings, while a federal judge in New Jersey refused to sanction the Republican National Committee for violating terms of a more than three-decade old agreement blocking voter intimidation there. Republicans deny the allegations.
In Arizona, Democratic efforts to extend voter registration by a day because the deadline fell on a holiday were rejected this week. And an effort to force ballots cast by voters in the wrong precinct to be counted was denied by the 9th Circuit.
Regarding ballots collected during the time the law was blocked, the Arizona Secretary of State’s office urged groups to turn them in Monday. County elections officials have said they lack authority to enforce the law and any valid ballot they receive through any means would be counted.
“All of those ballots, regardless of whether or not they were collected as a part of a lot of ballots, they were all going to be counted anyway. There was never any danger to voters,” said Matt Roberts, spokesman for Secretary of State Michele Reagan.
But state Republican Party Chairman Robert Graham said the Democratic groups should return the ballots to voters. The party has trained poll watchers to observe people who return multiple ballots and report them to election officials.
“Because now it’s up to the voter to bring it into the polling place” Graham said.
He also criticized Democrats for rushing to collect ballots knowing the Supreme Court was poised to act.
Democratic state Rep. Martin Quezada, who represents a heavily minority metro-Phoenix district, said there should be no legal liability for collecting during the window when the law was blocked. Backers of his campaign collected some ballots after the 9th Circuit ruling.
“We made a concerted effort to ensure that we documented the time when we collected these ballots, so there’s proof that we collected them during that time,” Quezada said. “Now we just have to go turn them in first thing Monday morning and we don’t expect there to be any problems with that.”
The Arizona Attorney General’s Office said it would review all elections-based complaints on a case-by-case basis and declined further comment.
Collecting early ballots is especially effective in minority communities, and Democrats alleged the law hurts minorities’ ability to vote. The last week before an election is the most critical time for their get-out-the-vote efforts, because it is too late to mail back an early ballot. They must be dropped off at an election office if they are to be counted.
Arizona has more than 3.5 million registered voters, and 2.3 million of them signed up to get a mail-in ballot. As of Friday, the Secretary of State said 1.56 million ballots have already been returned. It’s the remaining early ballots that parties target in the final week before an election.
The decision comes just days ahead of a presidential election that has Arizona Democrats hoping Hillary Clinton will win the traditionally Republican state.
Arizona’s majority Republican lawmakers approved the law earlier this year over the objection of Democrats. GOP Gov. Doug Ducey called it a common-sense effort to protect the integrity of elections and eliminate voter fraud.
A split 9th U.S. Circuit panel had said that by blocking the law it was preserving the status quo for Tuesday’s election, which could come down to the wire in Arizona as Democrats spend heavily to get out the vote from Latinos and others angered by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant comments.
Both parties have used ballot collection to boost turnout during elections by going door-to-door and asking voters if they have completed their mail-in ballots. Voters who have not are urged to do so, and the volunteers offer to take the ballots to election offices. Democrats, however, use it more effectively.
The law does not prevent voters’ family members or caregivers from turning in ballots.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
nothing like more rigging the elections in favor of crooked and lying hillary and it’s sooo not right
There is plenty of room for fraud in having organizations collecting ballots. This makes it easy for a person to sell their vote. It also makes it easy for a group to replace collected ballots with ones that will have the “correct” choices marked. If the people of Arizona are willing to live with the people elected by this method that’s their choice. Since this involves what may be a close presidential election, the rest of America should not have our future put in peril by this ballot collecting practice.
The Supreme Court may be smart enough to know that it is not in the nation’s best interest for there to be a question about the integrity of our election process. If the election comes down to Arizona’s electoral votes these tainted, and now illegal ballots, could create a constitutional crisis which would haunt the president for the next four years.
the only consern should be is are the voters actually citizens (its illeagle for non citizens to vote)
this election cycle theres pleanty of democrates voting across party lines and vise versa is my guess.
i’d be only intrested in knowing that voters are vetted citizens in eigther case.
By all her actions, Hillary Clinton is lawless. She is above the law. Everything she does is against the law. Now, you people want her to be president so she could continue stepping on our heads? Here are few examples of her violations and lies.
*Benghazi
*Influence peddling-selling our national security to foreign enemies like Russia, and the Muslim countries for hundreds of millions of dollars.
*Email violations; Bleach betting emails and hammering 13 IP’s to prevent retrieval of information after Congress issued subpoena to present all documents. Crimes Sec. 18 Title 2071.
*Lied to Congress under oath.
*Cheated on the 2nd debate where she received debate questions from CNN days before the debate was conducted. Perhaps the first debate also.
*Close ties to Russia for selling US Uranium to Russia for tens of millions of dollars, and giving Bill Clinton $500,000 of few minutes speaking engagement.
*Giving easy access to billionaires foreign and domestic, at the State Dept. for a quid-pro-quo donations to the Clinton Foundation for hundreds of millions of dollars.
*Out of the billions of dollars collected by the Clinton Foundation, it was reported that only 4.5% to 5% was given to charity. E.g. Haiti . The 95% percent went to her bank accounts on various forms, excessive overhead costs, luxurious travels, high paid salaries for groups she hired for the Foundation, including Chelsea. Gave $6 million plus to FBI Comey to silent him and to prevent him from prosecuting her crimes.
*Whispers of DOJ Lynch and Bill Clinton at the Airport Tarmac.
*Giving the rich Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, etc. quid-pro-quo
promising to increase ANNUALLY 550% of Muslim entries to the US. Out of this the Arab countries above gave Clinton hundreds of millions of dollars. Muslims ultimate goal is to take over the US for Islam. I believe that this was the hope and change of President *Obama, and now realized to be continued by Hillary Clinton. Obama and Clinton hates Christians as shown on their treatment and discrimination against Christians. Out of the
13,857 Muslim allowed by Obama to enter the US in 2016, only 43 Christians were included,
the fact that the /Christians are the ones slaughtered by Muslims in the Middle East.
*Clinton lied all the time; none in her words coming out of mouth are reliable.
*She lied and over and over again when interviewed by FBI Comey who she paid $6,000 to buy her freedom from prosecution.
*All her staff exercised the 5th, and were allowed immunity to speak. DOJ Lynch also exercised the 5th.
*Allowing her Maid to print her emails, classified or not. The law prevents other people without clearance to see emails classified or not.
*She violated email protocols, used personal server to send CLASSIFIED MESSAGES. *President Obama used also her personal server communicating with Clinton according to Huma Abedin by using alias name.
*ISIS is closely related to her, because Saudi Arabia, and other Arab countries are funding *ISIS. She received hundreds of millions of donations them the Arab countries.
*It was reported that the Soros Voting Machines are cheating the votes of the Republicans, by recording the GOP votes to Clinton and the democrats.
*Veritaz O’Keefe had obtained VIDEO where Hillary campaign funds are paying thugs to harass the Trump rallies and supporters.
*A vote for Clinton is a vote for a continued policy of President Obama.
*Devastating ObamaCare will continue and Clinton promised to raise $1.3 trillion from taxpayers to fund it.
*AMNESTY for the 13,million plus illegal aliens which will cost taxpayers more than $1.5 trillion annually. As a result Clinton will have to raise taxes in various forms.
*Clinton will increase 550% of Islam people every year to enter the US including ISIS.
By their actions, President Obama and Clinton love the Muslims, and hate the Christians through several forms of discrimination and prohibition. Kids in public schools are not allowed to worship Jesus while taught the Islam religion.
There is nothing in the California election system that
prevents vote counters from fraud.
The votes are dropped into a box, then opened, and scanned.
Poll workers, upon opening the ballot envelope , can easily
discard those not voting for the party of THEIR choice!
In NY the ballots are automatically counted as the voter
leaves the booth because they pull a lever that enters those votes.
During the primaries the booths (in CA) were set up (with large signs)
as Dem., Rep., or Ind…. so everyone could see what your party of choice was.
There are also MANY non-citizens voting in CA because the state issued them
driver’s licenses (used as ID’s to vote). For shame!
Nothing new for democrats and especially Hillary, she and Bill with their 30 years the experience have learn to game the system to satisfy their lust for power and money and have bled our government for almost 200 million dollars. Also set up the Clinton foundation for their own personal use.. Anyone that disagrees with this, I challenge you to prove me wrong.