This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The US supreme court on Saturday reinstated an Arizona law that makes it a felony to collect early ballots, dealing a blow to Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts just days before the presidential election.

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The order from the country’s highest court overturned an appeals court decision from a day earlier that blocked the new law. Democratic groups had already geared up to begin helping voters deliver their ballots to the polls.

The supreme court decision calls into question what happens to ballots such groups legally collected from voters in the approximately 20 hours in which the law was blocked.

Collecting early ballots is especially effective among minority communities. Democrats allege the law hurts minorities’ ability to vote.

The decision comes just days ahead of a presidential election that has Arizona Democrats hoping to win the traditionally Republican state.

Arizona filed an emergency appeal, hours after the ninth US circuit court of appeals blocked the law on Friday. Justice Anthony Kennedy referred the case to the entire supreme court, and the court issued a brief order overturning the appeals court ruling. The ninth circuit will now consider the law in a January session that it set when it blocked the law.

Republican lawmakers approved the law earlier this year, over the objection of minority Democrats. The GOP governor, Doug Ducey, called it a commonsense effort to protect the integrity of elections and eliminate voter fraud.

A split ninth US circuit panel said that by blocking the law, it was preserving the status quo for Tuesday’s election, which could come down to the wire in Arizona as Democrats spend heavily to get out the vote among Latinos and others angered by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant comments.

Chief judge Sidney Thomas wrote that the ninth circuit decision would not add or remove any valid votes. He said the law criminalized delivering someone else’s early ballot, which would still be counted.

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Both parties have used ballot collection to boost turnout by going door to door and asking voters if they have completed mail-in ballots. Voters who have not are urged to do so, and the volunteers offer to take the ballots to election offices. Democrats, however, use the practice more effectively.

The Arizona law does not prevent voters’ family members or caregivers from turning in ballots.

The Arizona Republican party chairman, Robert Graham, called Saturday’s decision a smart one since the law had been in effect since before the August primary. Leaving the ninth circuit decision in place would do “nothing more than confuse the voters”, he said.

Graham also criticized Democratic groups for rushing to collect ballots on Friday, saying they compromised people who might have trusted them to deliver their vote to the polls.