Published: 08.30.2006
Judge hears challenge to state's voter ID requirement
PAUL DAVENPORT
The Associated Press
PHOENIX - A federal judge on Wednesday began hearing a broad-based legal assault on a 2004 state law that requires Arizonans to produce specific forms of identification to register to vote or cast a ballot at a polling station.
The case finds one Arizona county at odds with the other 14 as the challengers, including numerous civil rights and minority groups, contend that the voter-approved 2004 law would deny many Arizonans their voting rights.
The 2004 law, placed on that year's ballot through an initiative campaign, requires that voters at polling places produce government-issued picture ID or two pieces of other non-photo identification specified by the law. It requires proof of citizenship when registering to vote.
Other parts of the 2004 law dealt with ineligibility of illegal immigrants to receive some government services and benefits.
The numerous plaintiffs initially filed three separate lawsuits that since have been consolidated into one case. The challengers include the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, the League of Women Voters, the Navajo Nation, the Mexican American Legal Defense, the Arizona Civil Liberties Union, the Arizona Advocacy Network and the Mexican American Legal and Education Fund.
The challengers argued that the requirements disenfranchise minorities and other voters who lack the required identification and for whom acquiring the required identification would be burdensome in time, money and effort. They also contend it hinders voter registration drives.
State lawyers said the challenge is merely an attempt by opponents of the 2004 law, which appeared on that year's ballot as Proposition 200, to do what they couldn't do at the polls.
"Proposition 200 simply adds integrity to the system that the voters of Arizona believed was lacking before," the state said in its response to the request for a preliminary injunction.
U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver began hearing testimony in the case Wednesday and hoped to finish the hearing by Thursday.
It was not clear how soon Silver would rule on the challengers' request for a preliminary injunction to bar the state and its counties from implementing the registration and poll identification requirements.
The registration deadline for the Sept. 12 primary has already passed. The deadline to register in the Nov. 7 general election is Oct. 9.
All but one county asked Silver to refuse to grant the challengers' request. The 14 counties said the request came too late and that granting it would disrupt training of poll workers and other preparations already far along for this year's elections.
Coconino County was the exception. Its legal brief noted that one-third of the county's residents are Native Americans and asked Silver to grant the request because requiring identification at the polls "will place a disproportionate burden on Native Americans, the poor and the elderly, effectively disenfranchising" them.
"Coconino County is really aligned with the folks over there," Assistant Attorney General Bruce Skolnik, gesturing toward the tables where the challengers' lawyers sat as the hearing opened, told Silver during a discussion about how to divvy up time between the sides.
In a June ruling on a related but narrower issue, Silver denied a request by some of the challengers to issue a temporary restraining order to prevent election officials from requiring that federal mail-in voter registration forms be accompanied by additional proof of citizenship.