Ninth Circuit reverses injunction on Arizona election canvass rule
PHOENIX (CN) — A Ninth Circuit panel reversed an injunction against a new election guideline conservative activists say could disenfranchise whole counties of Arizona voters but affirmed an injunction against another it says could violate First Amendment free speech.
Known as the canvass provision, the first challenged guideline in Arizona’s 2023 Elections Procedures Manual requires the secretary of state to toss a county’s votes if its supervisors refuse to canvass the county’s results by the secretary’s legal deadline to certify the statewide vote. Nonprofits American Encore and the America First Policy Institute lack standing to challenge the first provision, the judges say, having shown no past injury or likelihood of future injury.
“The secretary is unquestionably under a statutorily mandated duty to ‘enforce’ the canvass provision, i.e., canvass the state’s election results by the state canvass deadline,” U.S. Circuit Judge Kim Wardlaw wrote in a 43-page opinion published Tuesday morning. “However, plaintiffs would suffer injury (disenfranchisement) only if the county in which they voted failed to certify its election results by the state’s canvass deadline.”
That has never happened before.
https://courthousenews.com/ninth-circuit-reverses-injunction-on-arizona-election-canvass-rule/