Just over a week ago, I wrote about the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals making the stunning move of reversing its ruling on Arizona’s voter registration law, which requires anyone who cannot produce proof of citizenship to only be allowed to cast a federal ballot.
The rationale, from the judges on the three-judge panel who were in the majority? The change this close to the November elections would cause “confusion and chaos”:
In its Thursday order, approved on a 2-1 vote, the court reversed last month’s decision by a “motions panel ” that blocked certain voter registrations. That panel “misunderstood the extent of confusion and chaos that would be engendered by a late-stage alteration to the status quo of Arizona’s election rules,” Judges Kim McLane Wardlaw and Ronald Gould wrote.
In dissent, Judge Patrick Bumatay “argu[ed] the earlier panel got it right. The state legislature cannot…
