Congress, not the courts, will determine protection of voting rights

On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court will issue its final decisions of the term. One of these cases, Brnovich v. DNC, arises from a challenge arguing that certain Arizona election laws violate the Voting Rights Act because they disproportionately harm minority voters.

One Arizona law criminalizes ballot collection by people outside their immediate family — a practice which many rural and Indigenous voters on reservations rely upon to cast their ballots.

A second policy requires that a ballot must be thrown out if a voter goes to the wrong precinct to vote in person. This occurs in counties like Pima which still uses precinct-based voting, unlike Maricopa, which allows a voter to cast their ballot at any voting center.

The out-of-precinct ballots do not count in the tallies, yet voters may have gone to the effort of voting without knowing their ballot would not count.

The 9th Circuit agreed these laws violated the Voting Rights Act, back in January of 2020. But in his commitment to disenfranchise voters, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich immediately appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to keep these laws on the books.

The Voting Rights Act may not survive this case, given the Supreme Court’s recent decisions.

Shelby County v. Holder was based on faulty assertions denying the continued existence of racism in modern America, but nonetheless invalidated DOJ preclearance requirements. With Brnovich, the court is expected to neuter what Voting Rights Act provisions remain.

This expected outcome only adds to the growing chorus of voices clamoring for Congress to restore the Voting Rights Act and create robust voting protections that individual states cannot whittle away.

Many states have passed voter suppression laws in the name of addressing nonexistent voter fraud, and Arizona is no exception.

In the last few months, we have seen the Republican-led Arizona Legislature propose and enact more voter suppression bills than ever before. The farcical “audit” is finally wrapping up, through which our state Senate allowed Maricopa County ballots to be handed over to inexperienced and biased organizations with murky funding sources.

And we cannot forget that just five months ago, some of our own legislators attended the Jan. 6 rally that led to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, or voted to cast aside our state’s electoral votes for president and have continued to perpetuate the “Big Lie” casting doubt in the integrity of elections in Arizona.

The dangers to our democracy are everywhere and we must act immediately.

Many voting rights advocates are wondering what our U.S. senators plan to do next given the recent failure to break a Republican filibuster to pass necessary voting protections.

The broad alliance of advocates is committed to ensuring that our state’s elections occur smoothly and that every eligible Arizona voter is able to cast their ballot.

We appreciate efforts to achieve bipartisan solutions, but not if it allows minority rule at the expense of democracy.

We thank our senators for cosponsoring the For The People Act, which contains democratic reforms that are sorely needed in order to ensure election integrity and easy ballot access for every American citizen. The John Lewis Voting Rights Act is also needed to restore the now-eroded Voting Rights Act.

Congress must pass federal voting protections into law, or else our democracy will continue its authoritarian decline.