The American Democracy Minute Radio Report & Podcast for May 16, 2024
Today’s Script
(Variations occur with audio due to editing for time. Today’s Links below the script)
You’re listening to the American Democracy Minute, keeping YOUR government by and for the people.
You may have heard references to the “Purcell principle” in news reports. What started as a U.S. Supreme Court opinion to minimize confusion and disruption close to an election, may now be a partisan voter suppression tactic.
Five weeks before the 2006 midterms, a federal court stayed an Arizona voter ID proof of citizenship law intended to suppress Native American voters.
The Supreme Court took the case on an emergency basis – the so-called “shadow docket” – and overturned Purcell v Gonzalez, citing confusion for voters and election workers if changes were implemented too close to the election.
Courts since have cited Purcell to delay voting rights and redistricting cases, sometimes at the expense of the right to vote or fair districts, as with the racially-gerrymander maps in Alabama’s Milligan case. A lower court struck down the maps in January 2022. But the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the order, allowing their use for the midterms, only to throw them out in June 2023 as a violation of the Voting Rights Act. It undoubtedly cost Black Alabamians fair representation. A similar scenario may be unfolding in Louisiana, where fair Congressional maps were struck down with the 2024 election just six months away.
Could a partisan court influence an election just by manipulating a voting rights case on its calendar, then citing Purcell? We’ll be watching.
Find more at AmericanDemocracyMinute.org. I’m Brian Beihl.
Today’s Links
Articles & Resources:
Fordham Law Voting Rights & Democracy Project – The Purcell Principle: An Evolving Doctrine
Election Law at The Ohio State University via SCOTUS Blog – THE PURCELL PRINCIPLE: A PRESUMPTION AGAINST LAST-MINUTE CHANGES TO ELECTION PROCEDURES
NPR – Illegal voting maps were used in some states in 2022. This legal idea allowed them
Politico – The murky legal concept that could swing the election
Democracy Docket – Alabama Congressional Redistricting Challenge (SCOTUS)
Brittany Carter, American University Law – The Purcell Principle and the Antiblackness of Constitutional Fundamentalism
Groups Taking Action:
NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Campaign Legal Center, ACLU AL
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