The legal battle over the 2024 election is ongoing. The MAGA shenanigans of Georgia’s election board have overshadowed troubling developments in Arizona. Last week, the Supreme Court signaled it would revisit an issue settled more than a decade ago, allowing a new Arizona law that requires proof of citizenship to register to vote to go into effect. Reopening the issue at the last minute and after registration had already begun, the judges created a false public narrative that non-citizens were a threat to US elections. It’s the latest signal that the justices are aligned with former President Donald Trump and may be ready to meddle in the election—unless they decide by a margin too big to bother.
This is the case Republican National Committee v. My Family Votewhere the Republican National Committee requested an eleventh-hour “emergency” change to Arizona’s voter registration law-even though the state’s vote-by-mail registration window has begun. The lawsuit attacks voting rights and fair elections: Not only does the RNC seek to prevent tens of thousands of eligible Arizonans from voting legally, but it also avoids the canard that no citizens vote in US elections. As the libertarian Cato Institute noted: “there is no good evidence that non-citizens voted illegally in large enough numbers to change the outcome of the election.” The high court’s intervention was wrong, and the stakes couldn’t be higher: Joe Biden won Arizona in 2020 with just 10,457 votes, and it’s unclear what impact the court’s new decision will have in November.
The unsigned order of the court RNC cases allow the Arizona law to go into effect requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. This strongly suggests that the conservative wing of the court, of which three Trump appointees, will eventually strike down parts of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, a landmark federal voting rights law—held by Justice Antonin Scalia—as unconstitutional at the time. finally heard the case.
When the court in this case granted the request of the RNC to enable the law that requires proof of citizenship documents for all new registrations, refraining from others to attack 42,301 registered voters without documentation. However, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch will also do the latter.
And the threat is not over, since the court will have another potential opportunity to disturb Arizona’s voters. For example, Trump policy architect Stephen Miller and the America First group filed a lawsuit in Maricopa County, just a few weeks ago, to force the county recorder to participate in “list maintenance” by sending the names of registered voters without documentation to the Department. Homeland Security and the state attorney general.
Although Miller’s lawsuit may (and hopefully will) never happen, the court’s election season intervention could tip the vote even if the law only applies to registered candidates. Voter registration has been on the rise since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, with the nonpartisan registration group Vote.org reporting tens of thousands of new registrants across the country, 83 percent of whom are under the age of 34, just the first two. days after Biden’s announcement. Although data from Arizona is not yet available, the trend continues in battleground states nationwide. With the registration period well underway, the court’s new ruling means that the information previously provided to voters to ensure their eligibility to vote is no longer accurate. This compounds an existing registration pain point in Arizona, where more than 20,000 residents had their registrations withheld in the July primary—many due to minor technical errors—well before this court decision.
How did we get here? In an era three decades ago when the right to vote gained more bipartisan support, Congress passed the NVRA to standardize voter registration procedures across the country. To do so, it created a national registration application form, which requires applicants to swear under penalty of perjury to their status as US citizens, but does not require voters to submit additional supporting documentation. However, a decade later in 2004, Arizona enacted Proposition 200, which forced voters to submit proof of citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, to register to vote.
The Supreme Court in 2013 said Arizona could not do that. In a 7-2 decision, authored by Scalia and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court stated that the federal NVRA avoided the conflicting documentation requirements in Arizona because “the power of Congress over the ‘Times, Places and Manner’ of congressional elections’ is paramount, and may be exercised at any time, and wherever it may be thought expedient.’ “
Arizona already requires proof of citizenship to vote in state elections, and nearly all Arizona voters provide proof of citizenship. However, there are several thousand “federal only” voters in Arizona who have not yet submitted additional documentation, many of whom are registered at precincts on college campuses (so they are students without a driver’s license, not citizens who are not eligible to vote).
Emboldened by the party climate that seeks to dismantle constitutional norms and the rule of law, in 2022 Arizona Republicans passed a statute that asks-in clear conflict with the 2013 Supreme Court case-to reimpose citizenship documentation requirements for federal elections. The Supreme Court has explained that the NVRA “prevents Arizona from requiring Federal Form applicants to submit information beyond that required by the form.” In this age of precedent is not an impediment for the court to reach the ideology, the new bid RNC seems to have succeeded: In the order of the court last week, the new Arizona law requires all new registrations to provide documented proof of citizenship will move to. effect. And if we have fully reviewed the case, which we expect next year, we may look again at the status of 40,000 more registered voters.
To add insult to injury, the conservative wing of the court has been dizzyingly hypocritical to reverse itself here. In the 2020 election, Judge Brett Kavanaugh and Gorsuch called for the so-called Purcell principle, which stands for the idea that the Federal Court should not interfere with the state’s voting law close to the Election. The court’s last-minute changes to election rules here could make a difference in November. Not all voters without ID vote Democrat, but many do. That includes students who are away from home and, thus, without the documentation required by Arizona’s new law. Among 18- to 29-year-old voters in the battleground state, Harris leads Trump by 9 points.
Beyond the old voter suppression strategy, the RNC’s agenda to bring this case so close to the election is likely a psychological operation to sow the seeds of doubt in the presidential election by reviving a misguided conspiracy theory about outcome-determinism. non-citizen vote. And they are not alone: ​​24 states wrote an amicus brief in support of Arizona alleging that “aliens who voted illegally in the election” in sufficient numbers to have won North Carolina for Obama in 2008. In support of this claim, the state cited one. , the study is very methodologically flawed and used debunked, which the author has long complained about the work is twisted in this way.
Contrary to conspiracy theories, there are many bad reasons why people sometimes don’t have proof of citizenship, many of which have to do with income level. Extensive research shows that nearly 9 percent of age residents choose “not to have an unexpired driver’s license,” while “another 12 percent (28.6 million) have an unexpired license, but do not have a current address. and current name.” The same study found that “people in lower income groups are more likely to think that photo ID is not required to vote in person or are unsure.” Residents may not have access to documents that are locked in a safe deposit box at the bank, or because they have been lost or stolen while moving or in difficulty. That’s why the NVRA’s oath requirement works so well: It allows people who don’t have easy access to adequate documentation to vote, while raising the specter of criminal penalties for lying.
Not only are Arizona’s restrictions onerous, but they are unnecessary. States have many safeguards in place to ensure that non-citizens are not on the electoral roll and cannot vote. For example, states can cross-reference state DMV records, jury duty records, and Social Security records to ensure that non-citizens are not registered to vote.
