The Republican National Committee asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to revive parts of an Arizona law that requires documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in the state – including provisions that would require those documents to vote in the presidential election and to cast ballots by mail.
The request puts the spotlight on an issue that Republicans have wanted front and center in the 2024 campaign, despite the lack of evidence that non-citizen voting is a significant threat to elections.
Democrats and voting rights advocates say the requirement not only is unnecessary, but could disenfranchise people who don’t have easy access to documents like birth certificates that would prove their citizenship.
Republicans are seeking to revive parts of the law require proof of citizenship for Arizonans who register to vote using the state voter registration form. They are also seeking to revive a requirement for proof of citizenship to vote in a presidential election.
The complex way that Arizona crafted the proof of citizenship requirement in the 2022 voter law appears in part aimed at getting around a 2013 Supreme Court precedent that put limits on when states could impose such demands – particularly for those registering to vote using the federal registration form, which does not currently require documentary proof of citizenship.
The lower court orders blocking the provisions in the Arizona law, Republicans told the Supreme Court on Thursday, were “unprecedented abrogation” of the state lawmakers’ authority “to determine the qualifications of voters and structure participation in its elections.”
The filing was submitted to Justice Elena Kagan, who oversees emergency appeals arising from western part of the country.
At issue in the case is a 2018 consent decree arising from a separate lawsuit that set certain protocols for how registrations submitted using the state registration form are handled if the registrant has not provided proof of citizenship. The consent decree says those Arizonans must be allowed to vote in federal elections and that they should be registered for state elections too if records proving their citizenship already exist within the state’s DMV database.
The 2022 law would wipe those protocols away, requiring that election officials reject those registrations altogether.
A trial court struck down the proof-of-citizenship requirement for vote-by-mail and presidential elections, and ordered that for state-form registrations, the consent decree protocols remain in place.
A panel of judges on the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals briefly revived the proof-of-citizenship requirement for state-form registrations, only for a different 9th Circuit panel to put the requirement back on hold days later while an appeal of the case played out.
That appellate panel said it was doing so to “reinstate the status quo in Arizona as it has been since 2018 pending this expedited appeal.” It also pointed to the legal doctrine known as Purcell – frequently embraced by the conservative Supreme Court – that discourages judges from making changes to voting rules when an election is near.
In its new filing, the RNC, which was joined in the request by state GOP lawmakers, accused the 9th Circuit of contradicting the principle’s protections for “state election-integrity measures from last-minute interference.”
“The Arizona Legislature enacted the relevant statutes more than two years ago. But the Ninth Circuit order stopped state officials from enforcing the law,” the Republicans said.
