I have long been critical of the application of the Purcell Principle, a Supreme-court created rule that discourages court orders in the period before the election on grounds that it can cause election administrator difficulties and voter confusion. I initially wrote about this in a paper called “Reining in the Purcell Principle” and I update and extend the critique in my forthcoming Yale Law Journal piece. One of the criticisms I make of the Principle’s application in the YLJ piece is that the Court is unprincipled in applying it, sometimes failing to apply it where it should apply and sometimes applying it when it should not.

Now there’s no better example of this is the Supreme Court’s order in yesterday’s Arizona ruling. It was a split decision, both in terms of the relief granted and denied and the makeup of the Justices in three different camps. But the bottom line is that beginning today, people who try to register to vote using the state form who do not provide documentary proof of citizenship while registering to vote will not be allowed to register at all. This is a change from the past when they could vote at least in federal races. It’s going to create administrative confusion and voter disenfranchisement in the period before the election. Although the plaintiffs in the case raised the Purcell issue repeatedly, the Supreme Court ignored it here.

As Danielle Lang, one of the attorneys for plaintiffs explained in a series of tweets, the ruling is going to create a whole bunch of trouble. The instructions on the state form are incorrect, there’s not going to be enough time to get the word out to voters, and procedures have to change with the election just weeks away. How a court that is committed to Purcell could allow this to happen is inexplicable. It makes it appear that Purcell is just an excuse by some of the more conservative Justices to shape election law in the substantive direction that they like: blocking last-minute changes that help voters but green-lighting those that hurt them.