The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Arizona’s law that governs how to cure missing signatures on mail-in ballots. The decision involves mail-in ballots that did not include a signed affidavit as required by law.
The Court ruled against Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs the DNC who had fought for five extra business days to “cure” ballots.
The Court found:
The panel vacated a permanent injunction entered by the district court, and remanded with instructions to enter judgment in favor of defendant Arizona officials, in an action brought by Democratic Party organizations challenging the election-day deadline for voters who neglect to sign the vote by mail ballot affidavit as a violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments and as a denial of procedural due process.
Arizona voters may vote by mail during the last four weeks of an election. To vote by mail, a voter must return a completed ballot in a specially provided, postage-paid envelope, and the voter must sign an affidavit that is printed on the envelope. A ballot with a missing signature is incomplete and cannot be counted. A voter may correct a ballot with a missing signature by submitting a signed replacement ballot by the election-day deadline. Arizona voters may verify a mismatched signature for three or five days after election day, but voters may correct a missing signature by election day at the latest.
The panel held that, the State had an important regulatory interest in reducing the administrative burden on poll workers, especially during the busy days immediately following an election. In light of the minimal burden on the voter to sign the affidavit or to correct a missing signature by election day, the State’s interest sufficiently justified the election-day deadline.
The panel held further that although Arizona’s law implicated national interests, at least when the election included presidential candidates, that factor alone did not mean that the burden was more than minimal or that strict scrutiny must apply. In addition, the State rationally distinguished between voters who neglect to sign the affidavit, thereby submitting an incomplete ballot, and voters who validly submit a completed, not-yet-verified, ballot.
The Arizona legislature laudably amended its election code in 2019 to allow voters an extended period to correct mismatched signatures, and Arizona’s decision not to grant the same extension to voters who neglect to sign the affidavit passed constitutional muster.