A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Dec. 8 upheld the constitutionality of an Arizona voting law that gives voters who neglect to sign the envelope on mail-in ballots until Election Day, and not beyond, to resubmit a signed ballot.
The panel, which oversees much of the western U.S., overturned a federal judge who agreed with the Arizona Democratic Party, in Arizona Democratic Party v. Hobbs, that the law limiting the opportunity to submit a signed ballot by Election Day denied voters due process and violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.
The judge cited a voting rule that allows voters whose signatures can’t be verified up to five days beyond Election Day to verify the signatures.
But the panel concluded that the “Arizona legislature laudably amended its election code in 2019 to allow voters an extended period to correct mismatched signatures. We hold only that Arizona’s decision not to grant the same extension to voters who neglect to sign the affidavit passes constitutional muster.”
Arizona GOP Chairwoman Dr. Kelli Ward called the decision a “great victory” for election integrity.
“A mail-in envelope becomes an affidavit with a signature on it,” she said in a video posted on the GOP website. “It’s the only form of voter ID for mail-in ballots we have.”
The appeals panel also ruled that the state has an obligation to limit the administrative burden on poll workers. It also found that the burden on the voter to sign an affidavit or correct a missing signature by Election Day was “minimal.”
Back in July, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Democratic National Committee (DNC) v. Brnovich, upheld two Arizona voting rules. One negated votes cast in the wrong precinct on Election Day and the other banned ballot harvesting, or third-party collection of mail ballots, by anyone but a caregiver, family member, elections official or post office employee.
The DNC argued that the rules violated Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which forbids voting practices that restrict minority voting. The high court ruled however that nothing in the Arizona rules targeted any one group of voters.
