Cite as: 594 U. S. ____ (2021) 29 Opinion of the Court compliance with the requirement that Arizonans who choose to vote in-person on election day do so at their assigned polling places. And as the District Court recognized, precinct-based voting furthers important state interests. It helps to distribute voters more evenly among polling places and thus reduces wait times. It can put polling places closer to voter residences than would a more centralized votingcenter model. In addition, precinct-based voting helps to ensure that each voter receives a ballot that lists only the candidates and public questions on which he or she can vote, and this orderly administration tends to decrease voter confusion and increase voter confidence in elections. See 329 F. Supp. 3d, at 878. It is also significant that precinct-based voting has a long pedigree in the United States. See 948 F. 3d, at 1062–1063 (Bybee, J., dissenting) (citing J. Harris, Election Administration in the United States 206–207 (1934)). And the policy of not counting out-of-precinct ballots is widespread. See 948 F. 3d, at 1072–1088 (collecting and categorizing state laws). The Court of Appeals discounted the State’s interests because, in its view, there was no evidence that a less restrictive alternative would threaten the integrity of precinctbased voting. The court thought the State had no good reason for not counting an out-of-precinct voter’s choices with respect to the candidates and issues also on the ballot in the voter’s proper precinct. See id., at 1030–1031. We disagree with this reasoning. Section 2 does not require a State to show that its chosen policy is absolutely necessary or that a less restrictive means would not adequately serve the State’s objectives. And the Court of Appeals’ preferred alternative would have obvious disadvantages. Partially counting out-of-precinct ballots would complicate the process of tabulation and could lead to disputes and delay. In addition, as one of the en banc dissenters noted, it would tend to encourage voters who are primarily interested in only national or state-wide