Justices appear set to uphold Arizona limits

WASHINGTON >> The Supreme Court seemed ready on Tuesday to uphold two election restrictions in Arizona and to make it harder to challenge all sorts of limits on voting around the nation.

In its most important voting rights case in almost a decade, the court for the first time considered how a crucial part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 applies to voting restrictions that have a disproportionate impact on members of minority groups.

The court heard the case as disputes over voting rights have again become a flash point in American politics.

The immediate question for the justices was whether two Arizona measures ran afoul of the 1965 law. One of the measures requires election officials to discard ballots cast at the wrong precinct.

The other makes it a crime for campaign workers, community activists and most other people to collect ballots for delivery to polling places, a practice critics call “ballot harvesting.”

Although the Voting Rights Act seeks to protect minority voting rights, as a practical matter litigation under it tends to proceed on partisan lines. When Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked a lawyer for the Arizona Republican Party why his client cared about whether votes cast at the wrong precinct should be counted, he gave a candid answer.

“Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats,” said the lawyer, Michael A. Carvin. “Politics is a zerosum game, and every extra vote they get through unlawful interpretations of Section 2 hurts us.”

Jessica R. Amunson, a lawyer for Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of state, a Democrat, said electoral contests should not turn on voting procedures.