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Lawmakers in Alabama are tasked with coming up with new congressional voting districts for the state. That’s after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Alabama’s current map for likely weakening the power of Black voters. But the high court did not block that illegal map’s use in last year’s midterm elections. NPR’s Hansi Lo Wang explains the murky legal idea behind that decision.
HANSI LO WANG, BYLINE: The idea is this – federal courts should not make changes to voting rules close to an election to avoid confusing voters and election officials. People who follow this stuff know it as the Purcell Principle.
And you are the Purcell of the Purcell Principle. Is that right?
HELEN PURCELL: I guess so. I am the Purcell that was named in that lawsuit, Purcell v. Gonzalez.
WANG: That’s Helen Purcell. She used to run elections in Arizona’s Maricopa County. And back in 2006, a federal appeals court ordered a pause on Arizona’s voter ID rules. At the time, the last day of voting in the general election was about five weeks away.
And that’s a busy time in election offices, no?
PURCELL: It’s a tremendously busy time.
WANG: Purcell was worried a late change could vex voters and election officials.
PURCELL: It’s mind-boggling when you’re thinking, OK, how do I do this now because now the rules have been changed?
WANG: So Purcell and other county officials put in an emergency request, and the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the lower court’s order. The justices warned that court orders about elections can confuse voters, especially those that come out close to an election. For Purcell, that ruling from the country’s highest court was a big relief and a big deal.
PURCELL: But I didn’t think this was going to kind of take on a life of its own because it’s been used any number of times, kind of quietly, for a while.
WANG: And there’s an election law expert at UCLA who’s been keeping track for years. In fact, Rick Hasen has been credited with coming up with the name for this legal idea.
RICHARD HASEN: I think Purcell Principle rolls off the tongue in a way, and so it’s become a little catchy.
WANG: It’s also been quite murky. Hasen says there are a lot of open questions about the Supreme Court’s thinking.
What is too close to election?
HASEN: The court has never defined how long that period is, but in the last few years, the court has seemed to apply the principle more broadly and for a longer period of time.
WANG: Which brings us back to Alabama’s congressional voting districts. Last year, the state’s current map was struck down by a panel of three federal judges. They concluded that the map likely violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the power of Black voters. At the time, the primary elections were months away, and the judges said there was plenty of time to draw a new map. But after Republican state lawmakers in Alabama sent an emergency request, the Supreme Court put a pause on that order, and that allowed the illegal map to be used for the midterms. Two of the court’s conservative justices cited the Purcell Principle.
GILDA DANIELS: The vote delayed is a vote denied.
WANG: Gilda Daniels is a former Justice Department official who now teaches at the University of Baltimore’s law school, and she points out how the Supreme Court cited the Purcell Principle in the Alabama case led to Georgia and Louisiana also using congressional maps last year that likely violated the Voting Rights Act.
DANIELS: You can’t get in a time machine now and go back and say, OK, you now have an additional district. Now vote under this fair and equitable map.
WANG: The way Wilfred Codrington III, associate law professor at Brooklyn Law School, sees it, how the Supreme Court has used the Purcell Principle sends a dangerous message.
WILFRED CODRINGTON III: You get one election free, no matter how illegal your election rule might be.
WANG: Codrington says how federal courts used the Purcell Principle last year meant Black voters made up the majority in fewer congressional districts than they should have.
CODRINGTON: And those majority-Black districts are likely to vote for Democrats. That could have made all the difference.
WANG: All the difference in a U.S. House of Representatives where Republicans won one of the narrowest majorities in history. Hansi Lo Wang, NPR News.
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