Bloomberg Quicktake's video: Voting Rights Challenged at Supreme Court as States Change Rules

Voting-rights advocates are worried as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments in an Arizona case that could undercut the landmark law that’s protected the rights of minorities at the polls for a half century. Tuesday’s clash over the 1965 Voting Rights Act comes as Republican-controlled states consider a barrage of new restrictions that could make it harder for minorities to cast ballots in 2022 elections. It follows November’s presidential contest in which Donald Trump refused to concede and instead made baseless assertions of widespread fraud. And the case comes before a Supreme Court that, bolstered by three Trump appointees, has only grown more conservative since it nullified a key component of the law in 2013. “The court could decide this in a number of ways which could include weakening or limiting” the law, said Myrna Perez, a voting rights litigator at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. The case centers on the law’s Section 2, a provision that’s now the primary tool for challenging voting laws as discriminatory. Section 2 took on heightened importance after the high court’s 2013 Shelby County decision effectively killed a separate section that had required some states to get federal clearance before they changed their voting rules. A federal appeals court invoked Section 2 to invalidate two Arizona policies as having a disproportionate impact on minority voters. The San Francisco-based court struck down a law that made it a crime for most people to collect or deliver another person’s early ballot, a practice critics call “ballot harvesting.” The appeals court also voided Arizona’s longstanding policy of rejecting ballots cast in the wrong precinct. In addition, the majority said the ballot-collection law amounted to intentional discrimination, violating both Section 2 and the Constitution’s 15th Amendment. Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2TwO8Gm Bloomberg Quicktake brings you live global news and original shows spanning business, technology, politics and culture. Make sense of the stories changing your business and your world. To watch complete coverage on Bloomberg Quicktake 24/7, visit http://www.bloomberg.com/qt/live, or watch on Apple TV, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, Fire TV and Android TV on the Bloomberg app. Have a story to tell? Fill out this survey for a chance to have it featured on Bloomberg Quicktake: https://cor.us/surveys/27AF30 Connect with us on… YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/Bloomberg Breaking News on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BloombergQuickTakeNews Twitter: https://twitter.com/quicktake Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quicktake Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quicktake