Apex court blocks Alabama order to ease voting rules
The United States Supreme Court has blocked a lower-court ruling that would have relaxed voting restrictions in Alabama state during the coronavirus pandemic.
Alabama requires voters to submit photo identification when they apply for an absentee ballot.
The state also requires that ballot to be returned along with the signature of two witnesses or a notary.
A US district court judge in Birmingham, Alabama’s largest city, issued a ruling last month that would have effectively freed voters from the photo identification requirement, in some counties, if they are 65 or older or have a disability.
Under that ruling, voters with medical conditions that put them at risk of Covid-19 could sidestep the requirement to have their ballots signed by a witness.
The Covid-19 respiratory disease is caused by the coronavirus.
The judge also would have blocked the Alabama government from restricting counties that wished to establish curbside voting.
However, the Supreme Court blocked the district court ruling in a 5-4 decision along ideological lines, at least until an appeals process is resolved.
The case deals with Alabama’s July 14 run-off election, which was postponed from March due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The election includes a Republican Senate primary between former US attorney-general Jeff Sessions and former college football coach Tommy Tuberville.
President Donald Trump has previously clashed with Sessions, and has endorsed Tuberville.
Democrats and Republicans are fighting nationwide over how to manage the voting process during a pandemic ahead of the November 3 elections that will determine control of the White House, Congress and state legislatures across the country.
Trump and Republican allies have attacked the idea of expanding mail balloting, arguing that it is vulnerable to fraud and worrying that easier voting would hurt their party’s chances.
Democrats and votingrights groups say it is a way to protect voters from the coronavirus, and that a failure to guarantee that option amid a pandemic will prevent poor and African Americans from voting because they are deemed more vulnerable to the virus.
According to studies, those voters tended to lean Democratic.
Alabama’s Republican secretary of state, John Merrill, welcomed the Supreme Court’s ruling as consistent with state law.
He said in an interview that “many liberals have tried to use this pandemic to advance causes” through courts after failing to do so through legislation.
Benard Simelton, who is president of the state chapter of National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), said that the Supreme Court ruling would disenfranchise voters.