[ad_1]
The Supreme Court resumed its work a little over a week ago and its first decisions are arriving.
Among them? A decision Tuesday in which the Supreme Court refused to intervene in a challenge of a law on the identification of voters in North Dakota.
The law requires North Dakota residents to provide identification with a mailing address in order to vote. But the state is home to thousands of Amerindians and other people who do not have standard addresses, which, according to the challengers, would effectively deprive them of their rights.
A federal district court in North Dakota agreed in April, preventing the secretary of state from enforcing the new requirements and allowing voters to vote in the primaries. But last month, the US Court of Appeals's 8th Circuit Court suspended the court's decision.
The applicants therefore made an urgent request to the Supreme Court asking the judges to overturn the law, but the latter dismissed it without explanation – with the exception of Ginsburg J., who wrote a dissent which Judge Kagan had joined. Judge Brett Kavanaugh, recently appointed to the Supreme Court, did not join the decision.
In his dissent, Ginsburg pointed out that 70,000 residents of North Dakota, which represents nearly 20% of turnout "in an ordinary quadrennial election – does not have any qualifying identity piece" in under the provisions of the law. Another 18,000 residents "do not have enough additional documentation to vote without an ID card".
What's more, Ginsburg noted that changing the rules before the November elections could confuse voters. "The risk of voter confusion seems serious here because the injunction to require the identification of the residence address was in effect at the first election and that the website of the State Secretary announced for months the ID-related requirements as they existed under this injunction, "Ginsburg said.
"Reasonable voters might well assume that identity cards allowing them to vote in primary elections would remain valid during general elections."
The state is one of the least populated in the country, which means that a few hundred votes could decide an election. And Native Americans vote disproportionately Democratic, which could be bad news for Senator Heidi Heitkamp, the historic incumbent of the Democratic Party, who is struggling to contain his Republican opponent. Heitkamp, who decided to break with his condition and vote against Kavanaugh's confirmation last week, won his last race with only 3,000 votes.
Source link
