Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-1257_g204.pdf
Page Number: 79

Cite as:  594 U. S. ____ (2021) 

35 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

  Facts  also  undermine  the  State’s  asserted  interests, 
which the majority hangs its hat on.  A government inter-
est, as even the majority recognizes, is “merely one factor to 
be  considered”  in  Section  2’s  totality  analysis.    Houston 
Lawyers’ Assn., 501 U. S., at 427; see ante, at 19.  Here, the 
State  contends  that  it  needs  the  out-of-precinct  policy  to 
support  a  precinct-based  voting  system.    But  20  other 
States  combine  precinct-based  systems  with  mechanisms 
for partially counting out-of-precinct ballots (that is, count-
ing  the  votes for  offices  like  President  or Governor).   And 
the District Court found that it would be “administratively 
feasible” for Arizona to join that group.  329 F. Supp. 3d, at 
860.  Arizona—echoed by the majority—objects that adopt-
ing a partial-counting approach would decrease compliance 
with the vote-in-your-precinct rule (by reducing the penalty 
for  a  voter’s  going  elsewhere).    But  there  is  more  than  a 
little paradox in that response.  We know from the extraor-
dinary number of ballots Arizona discards that its current 
system fails utterly to “induce[ ] compliance.”  Ante, at 28–
29; see supra,  at  30–31.  Presumably, that is because the 
system—most notably, its placement and shifting of polling 
places—sows  an  unparalleled  level  of  voter  confusion.    A 
State that makes compliance with an election rule so unu-
sually hard is in no position to claim that its interest in “in-
duc[ing]  compliance”  outweighs  the  need  to  remedy  the 
race-based discrimination that rule has caused. 

B 
  Arizona’s law mostly banning third-party ballot collection 
also results in a significant race-based disparity in voting 
opportunities.  The problem with that law again lies in facts 
nearly unique to Arizona—here, the presence of rural Na-
tive American communities that lack ready access to mail 

—————— 
operates to exclude exactly the evidence that most strongly signals a Sec-
tion 2 violation.