WASHINGTON — In seemingly contradictory voting-rights actions a month before elections, the Supreme Court has allowed new Republican-inspired restrictions to remain in force in North Carolina and Ohio while blocking Wisconsin’s voter identification law.
But there’s a thread of consistency: In each case, the court appears to be seeking a short-term outcome that is the least disruptive for the voting process.
Another test of the court’s outlook on voter ID laws could come from Texas, where the state is promising to appeal a ruling by a Corpus Christi judge that struck down its strict law as unconstitutional racial discrimination.
None of the orders issued in recent days is a final ruling on the constitutionality of the laws. The orders are all about timing — whether the laws can be used in this year’s elections — while the justices defer consideration of their validity.
Republican lawmakers say the measures are needed to reduce voter fraud. Democrats contend they are thinly veiled attempts to keep eligible voters, many of them minorities supportive of Democrats, away from the polls.
The high court has laid out one area of agreement: a general rule discouraging courts in general from letting potentially disruptive changes take effect at the last minute.
“The idea that courts should not impose a new set of voting rules just before an election is not a new one,” said Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California at Irvine law school.
