Team Trump Turns Tide in Voting Law Legal Battles
South Carolina is the latest in a string of states to side with President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign in upholding voting laws ranging from ballot harvesting regulations to Election Day deadlines.
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with state Republicans in reinstating a South Carolina voting requirement that absentee ballots have a witness’s signature, a mandate federal courts had deemed an unnecessary imposition because of coronavirus. No justices published dissents on the order.
The South Carolina GOP expressed its satisfaction with the decision, saying in a statement that “despite the Democrats’ efforts to hijack a pandemic and use it to meddle with our election laws, they’ve lost.”
The court provided one concession to the order in that it should not apply to ballots that have already been mailed without a witness’s signature and arrive within two days.
On Friday, the Arizona Supreme Court granted a petition led by Attorney General Mark Brnovich and state Republicans on the state’s out-of-precinct (OOP) voting policy and “ballot-collection law,” which currently limits the handling of another person’s absentee ballot to family and household members, mail carriers, and election officials.
The Ninth Circuit struck down the OOP policy and ballot-collection restrictions in January, but the Supreme Court’s decision to consider the two measures now means they will both remain in place through the November 3 general election.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) had claimed the OOP policy and restrictions on ballot collection, also known as ballot harvesting, “adversely and disparately affected Arizona’s American Indian, Hispanic, and African American citizens” and “unduly burden minorities’ right to vote.”
Brnovich argued that reversing these provisions is a threat to election integrity and warned that ballot harvesting, specifically, could cause “undue influence, voter fraud, ballot tampering, and voter intimidation.” Brnovich continued:
South Carolina is the latest in a string of states to side with President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign in its fight on voting laws.
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