The Supreme of the United States legitimizes two laws of Arizona that restrict the vote of the minorities

Vote counting in Maricopa County, Phoenix, Arizona, following the November 2020 election.Matt York / AP

With an ideological and partisan decision, the Supreme Court of the United States has validated this Thursday two electoral norms of the State of Arizona, which leave the Voting Rights Act of 1965 reduced to a minimum effect. President Joe Biden's immediate response after hearing the ruling was blunt, declaring that "democracy is at stake." This 6-3 ruling, argued by Judge Samuel Alito, means that from now on it will be more difficult to dispute all the new laws passed by state legislatures after the 2020 elections, following Donald Trump's protest that there was electoral fraud. .

What the Supreme Court decided about was two Arizona laws.

The first prohibits the collection of votes by a relative of those who cannot go to vote.

The second dictates that all the votes that have been deposited in a different precinct to the one that corresponds to the voter are directly thrown away.

Both norms had been annulled by a federal appeals court that alleged that they left voters of certain minorities (be they black, Latino ...) in a terrain of inequality.

This Thursday the highest court in the country has reinstated those two regulations, with the opinion of Judge Alito voting in favor, considering that because the voting system is "inconvenient for some" does not mean that access to vote is unequal.

More information

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The reply to Alito has been given by one of the three liberal judges who make up the Court.

Elena Kagan accused the new super majority represented by the Supreme Court, after the passage of Donald Trump (who managed to appoint three magistrates, in a position that is for life), of rewriting "once again" the Law of the Right to Vote.

"Never before has a regulation [in reference to the 1965 law] done so much to advance and promote one of the fundamental ideas of the nation," Kagan argues.

"Few laws are so vital at the moment," continues the judge.

"And yet," the judge disagrees, "in the last decade this court has treated this legislation worse than any other."

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