Dem
51
GOP
49
While most politics-watchers' attention was elsewhere, the Supreme Court snuck in a ruling yesterday, using its infamous shadow docket. The short version is that, when it comes to voting in Arizona, the Republican Party went 1-2.
The legal situation is actually a little complicated. In simplest terms, there are a pair of Arizona laws that require someone to provide documentary proof of citizenship in order to be allowed to vote. The initial law, from 20 years ago, imposed that requirement for state and local elections. An additional law, rammed through in 2022 by the GOP-controlled legislature, would extend that to federal elections, as well as to all absentee ballots. The RNC and other Republican groups filed suit to try to get both laws enforced. If the Republicans were to prevail, it's estimated that roughly 42,000 Arizonans (the majority of them Latino) would be tossed off the voter rolls. As a reminder, Joe Biden's margin of victory there in 2020 was 10,457 votes.
Both laws had been stayed by a federal judge while the lawsuit plays out. Yesterday, the Supremes lifted the stay on the earlier law, by a vote of 5-4 (the five male justices were on one side, the four women were on the other). However, the stay on the later law was allowed to remain in place. It's not known exactly what the vote was for the second part of the decision, only that it was the three liberals, Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and one or both of Chief Justice John Roberts/Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The current state of affairs might very well hold once the entire legal process has played out. States have a fair bit of latitude in running state and local elections, but when it comes to federal elections, if a person registers using the universal federal voter registration form, federal law is very clear that documentation of citizenship is not required (merely an affirmation). In terms of this year's elections, the federal contests shouldn't be too much affected by the Supremes' ruling. On the other hand, it could interfere with Democrats' hopes of flipping the two chambers of the Arizona legislature. (Z)