The MAGA Justices Have Already Interfered in the 2024 Election
The MAGA Supreme Court justices — the de facto legal department of the Republican National Committee — granted an RNC request for a last-minute change to Arizona’s election rules, making it harder to register to vote in the presidential election. Coming just weeks before Arizona’s October 7 registration deadline, the decision helps Republicans disenfranchise voters and exposes the insincerity behind recent decisions in which the court’s right-wing justices left in place unconstitutional election rules on the grounds that changing them would be too disruptive several months before an election.
Just 6 weeks before Arizona’s voter registration deadline, the MAGA Supreme Court helped the Republican National Committee impose new proof-of-citizenship requirements on Arizonans attempting to register to vote.
By contrast, in 2022 the Supreme Court ordered Alabama to use Republican-gerrymandered maps a lower court had blocked for violating the Voting Rights Act. The Court’s order in that case was based on the claim that changing district lines months before the election would be disruptive and in violation with the so-called Purcell principle that Courts should not make last-minute changes to election rules. Justice Kavanaugh wrote at the time: “When an election is close at hand, the rules of the road must be clear and settled…Late judicial tinkering with election laws can lead to disruption and to unanticipated and unfair consequences for candidates, political parties, and voters, among others.” In 2023, the Supreme Court ultimately acknowledged the maps were illegally gerrymandered – but not before its 2022 order requiring their use helped Republicans win control of the House of Representatives.
Election law expert Professor Rick Hasen summarized the impact of the new Arizona decision: “The instructions on the state form are incorrect, there’s not going to be enough time to get the word out to voters, and procedures have to change with the election just weeks away. How a court that is committed to Purcell could allow this to happen is inexplicable. It makes it appear that Purcell is just an excuse by some of the more conservative Justices to shape election law in the substantive direction that they like: blocking last-minute changes that help voters but green-lighting those that hurt them.”
The Supreme Court’s Arizona decision is just the latest in a long line of rulings in which the Republican justices have given Republican candidates electoral advantage, most notably by helping them suppress and dilute the votes of people of color. With more likely to come before the conclusion of this year’s elections, here’s a look back at some of the ways the MAGA court has already helped Republican candidates:
Take Back the Court raises awareness about the urgent need to expand the number of seats on the Supreme Court to address the theft of the court by Senator Mitch McConnell during the Obama Administration. Without adding seats, Congress will not be able to restore the right to vote, ensure reproductive freedom, protect workers, halt our climate emergency, or pass new legislation. Court expansion, which can be accomplished without a constitutional amendment, is the only reform that enables the un-rigging of the system and the restoration of democracy. Learn more: https://www.takebackthecourt.today/