Must voters have to prove citizenship to register?
Must voters have to prove citizenship to register?
By JESSE J. HOLLAND and JACQUES BILLEAUD | Associated Press – 2 hrs 37 mins ago...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court will struggle this week with the validity of an Arizona law that tries to keep illegal immigrants from voting by demanding all state residents show documents proving their U.S. citizenship before registering to vote in national elections.
The high court will hear arguments Monday over the legality of Arizona's voter-approved requirement that prospective voters document their U.S. citizenship in order to use a registration form produced under the federal "Motor Voter" voter registration law that doesn't require such documentation.
This case focuses on voter registration in Arizona, which has tangled frequently with the federal government over immigration issues involving the Mexican border. But it has broader implications because four other states — Alabama, Georgia, Kansas and Tennessee — have similar requirements, and 12 other states are contemplating similar legislation, officials say.
The Obama administration is supporting challengers to the law.
If Arizona can add citizenship requirements, then "each state could impose all manner of its own supplemental requirements beyond the federal form," Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. said in court papers. "Those requirements could encompass voluminous documentary or informational demands, and could extend to any eligibility criteria beyond citizenship, such as age, residency, mental competence, or felony history."
A federal appeals court threw out the part of Arizona's Proposition 200 that added extra citizenship requirements for voter registration, but only after lower federal judges had approved it.
Arizona wants the justices to reinstate its requirement.
Kathy McKee, who led the push to get the proposition on the ballot, said voter fraud, including by illegal immigrants, continues to be a problem in Arizona. "For people to conclude there is no problem is just shallow logic," McKee said.
Opponents of Arizona's law see it as an attack on vulnerable voter groups such as minorities, immigrants and the elderly. They say Arizona's law makes registering more difficult, which is an opposite result from the intention of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act.
Proposition 200 "was never intended to combat voter fraud," said Democratic state Sen. Steve Gallardo of Phoenix. "It was intended to keep minorities from voting."
With the additional state documentation requirements, Arizona will cripple the effectiveness of neighborhood and community voter registration drives, advocates say. More than 28 million Americans used the federal "Motor Voter" form to register to vote in the 2008 presidential elections, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
An Arizona victory at the high court would lead to more state voting restrictions, said Elisabeth MacNamara, the national president of the League of Women Voters.
Opponents of the Arizona provision say they've counted more than 31,000 potentially legal voters in Arizona who easily could have registered before Proposition 200 but who were blocked initially by the law in the 20 months after it passed in 2004. They say about 20 percent of those thwarted were Latino.
Arizona officials say they should be able to pass laws to stop illegal immigrants and other noncitizens from getting on their voting rolls. The Arizona voting law was part of a package that also denied some government benefits to illegal immigrants and required Arizonans to show identification before voting.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the voter identification provision. The denial of benefits was not challenged.
Opponents "argue that Arizona should not be permitted to request evidence of citizenship when someone registers to vote, but should instead rely on the person's sworn statement that he or she is a citizen," Arizona Attorney General Thomas C. Horne said in court papers.
"The fallacy in that is that someone who is willing to vote illegally will be willing to sign a false statement. What (opponents) are urging is that there should be nothing more than an honor system to assure that registered voters are citizens. That was not acceptable to the people of Arizona."
The Arizona proposition was enacted into law with 55 percent of the vote.
This is the second voting issue the high court is tackling this session. Last month, several justices voiced deep skepticism about whether a section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a law that has helped millions of minorities exercise their right to vote, especially in areas of the Deep South, was still needed.
This case involves laws of more recent vintage.
The federal "Motor Voter" law, enacted in 1993 to expand voter registration, allows would-be voters to fill out a mail-in voter registration card and swear they are citizens under penalty of perjury, but it doesn't require them to show proof.
Under Proposition 200 approved in 2004, Arizona officials require an Arizona driver's license issued after 1996, a U.S. birth certificate, a passport or other similar document, or the state will reject the federal registration application form.
This requirement applies only to people who seek to register using the federal mail-in form. Arizona has its own form and an online system to register when renewing a driver's license. The court ruling did not affect proof of citizenship requirements using the state forms.
State officials say more than 90 percent of those Arizonans applying to vote using the federal form will be able to simply write down their driver's license number, and all naturalized citizens simply will be able to write down their naturalization number without needed additional documents.
Former Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce, a leading Republican proponent of Proposition 200, strongly disputed claims that Arizona doesn't have voter fraud problems. "They turn a blind eye," Pearce said of the state's election officials.
But Karen Osborne, elections director for Maricopa County, where nearly 60 percent of Arizona's voters live, said voter fraud is rare, and even rarer among illegal immigrants.
"That just does not seem to be an issue," Osborne said of the claim that illegal immigrants are voting. "They did not want to come out of the shadows. They don't want to be involved with the government."
The main legal question facing the justices is whether the federal law trumps Arizona's law. A 10-member panel of the 9th Circuit in San Francisco said it did.
The appeals court issued multiple rulings in this case, with a three-judge panel initially siding with Arizona. A second panel that included retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who from time to time sits on appeals courts, reversed course and blocked the registration requirement. The full court then did the same, and that decision will be reviewed by the justices in Washington.
The case is 12-71, Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc.
Must voters have to prove citizenship to register? - Yahoo! News
Arizona’s Voter Registration Law Takes Heat At Supreme Court
By Shannon Bream
Published March 18, 2013
Fox News Latino
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Washington – Monday marked yet another Supreme Court showdown for Arizona and the Obama administration. At issue, this time, was the state's Proposition 200 measure, which requires voter registration applicants to provide documentation proving U.S. citizenship.
Critics of the measure say the state has no authority to go beyond what's required on the simplified federal voter registration form. On the federal form applicants must check a box indicating U.S. citizenship, sign attesting to that fact and drop the form in the mail.
Arizona officials, citing hundreds of cases of non-U.S. citizens registering to vote, say additional barriers need to be put in place.
Under Proposition 200, applicants can present a number of various documents, including driver’s license, birth certificate and certain Native American tribal documents.
"If somebody's willing to fraudulently vote, that person would be willing to sign falsely," said Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, who argued the case Monday. "We need evidence that the person is a citizen," he added.
During the arguments, Justice Antonin Scalia expressed skepticism about the streamlined federal form. Referring to the required signature he said, "So it's under oath - big deal." Echoing Horne's reasoning, Scalia added, "If you're willing to violate the voting laws, I suppose you're willing to violate the perjury laws."
But despite any issues outlined by Arizona, many of the justices seemed to agree the state may have exceeded its authority on the issue of voter registration.
"The statute [says] each state must accept and use the federal form, period - that's the end," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said.
Though the Justice Department was not an official party to the case, the Court permitted it to take part in Monday's arguments against Proposition 200. Retired Justice, and Arizona native, Sandra Day O'Connor sat in on arguments Monday. She often sits on lower federal courts that are understaffed, and was a part of the Ninth Circuit panel that struck down Proposition 200's heightened voter registration requirements.
O'Connor's former colleagues are expected to make a decision by June. In the meantime, opponents of the Arizona measure are feeling optimistic.
"Federal law overrides this provision," Nana Perales, Vice President of Litigation at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), said, adding, "We are confident today based on the arguments in the Supreme Court."
The Arizona case has broad implications because four other states — Alabama, Georgia, Kansas and Tennessee — have similar requirements, and 12 other states are contemplating similar legislation.
Opponents of Arizona's law see it as an attack on vulnerable voter groups such as minorities, immigrants and the elderly. They say Arizona's law makes registering more difficult, which is an opposite result from the intention of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act.
Arizona’s Voter Registration Law Takes Heat At Supreme Court | Fox News Latino
Arizona’s War Against Illegal Alien Voter Fraud Hits U.S. Supreme Court Today
By John Hill on March 18, 2013
standwitharizona.com
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The following statement would seem to be a no-brainer: people who vote in national elections must be U.S. citizens.
Yet we see bizarre headlines such as this from the Associated Press today: Must voters have to prove citizenship to register?
You might as well ask: “Must drivers have to open their eyes to drive”? It is the biggest ‘duh’ imaginable.
Unless of course, you have a vested interest in enabling and expanding voter fraud in the United States. And so we have the U.S. Supreme Court today hearing arguments in Arizona vs. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona.
What is this case about? In a nutshell, the state of Arizona is once again standing up for the rule of law, and being taken on by the entire left-wing establishment, plus the Obama DOJ.
The details:
In 2004, Arizona passed Proposition 200, which among other things (such as denying welfare to illegal aliens), required all voters to provide evidence of citizenship before registering to vote or casting a ballot.
As a response, the plaintiff, the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona – backed by the illegal alien advocacy group Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, among others - sued the state, arguing that Proposition 200 was inconsistent with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) – Bill Clinton’s infamous “Motor Voter Law” – which requires states to “accept and use” a voter registration form created by the Electoral Assistance Commission (EAC). The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco – the most liberal in the nation – struck down Arizona’s citizenship requirement. The Supreme Court granted review of the case on October 15th, 2012. And so here we are.
So what is this “voter registration form” that the Motor Voter law established? Quite simply: an invitation to voter fraud. It does not require any proof whatsoever that the individual registering to vote is a U.S. citizen. It merely asks them to “affirm” that they are. That’s it…the “honor system”!
To make things worse the Motor Voter Law requires local welfare offices, social service agencies and motor vehicle departments to offer voter registration forms to everyone who comes in, no questions asked. ACORN-like groups have long practiced signing up new “voters” at places where illegal aliens congregate.
Columnist and radio host Roger Hedgecock detailed his experiences canvassing in Orange County, CA in 201, and discovering potentially massive voter fraud by illegal aliens:
I walked door-to-door in 2010 canvassing for Republican congressional candidate Van Tran in the Anaheim, Calif.,-area district now represented by Democrat Loretta Sanchez. Our team ran across people who were listed as registered voters in rolls obtained from the county registrar who openly admitted they were illegal and stated they could not vote and had never voted.
In California, the voter registration card requires a check in the box stating you are a citizen of the U.S. The box is always checked and nobody ever questions it.
Does the illegal alien actually vote? Apparently not. Another box on the registration form requests a permanent mail-in ballot be sent to the “voter.” The mailing address is different from the “voter’s” residence address, meaning that the the illegal alien “voter” never receives a ballot and never votes. The mail-in ballots are sent to another location and someone else votes and mails back the ballot for the new “voter.”
Random checks of these mailing addresses show the same addresses over and over. This is election fraud on an organized level. It’s going on now in every state.
But the Motor Voter law prohibits non-citizens from registering to vote, right? Yep…a FELONY. But as we’ve learned from Obama and his DOJ on immigration laws: a law means nothing if it is not enforced. And the Federal government has shown no interest in enforcing the Motor Voter law fraud provisions.
For example, in 1997, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office in Dallas were investigating voting by non-citizens. They sent a computerized tape of the names of individuals who had voted to the INS requesting a check against INS records, but the INS refused to cooperate with the criminal investigation. An INS official was quoted as saying that the INS bureaucracy did not “want to open a Pandora’s Box…. If word got out that this is a substantial problem, it could tie up all sorts of manpower. There might be a few thousand [illegal voters] in Dallas, for example, but there could be tens of thousands in places like New York, Chicago or Miami.”
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Read The Threat of Non-Citizen Voting, by Hans A. von Spakovsky, for shocking examples of Federal non-enforcement of suspected illegal alien voter fraud.
And Arizona wants no part of it. So in 2004 voters overrode the fraud-friendly Motor Voter registration form, and required what the Feds themselves should have required: that indivisuals present proof of citizenship a driver’s license, a birth certificate, a passport, naturalization documents, or any other documents accepted by the federal government to prove citizenship for employment purposes.
It was immediately opposed by the ACLU, ACORN, MALDEF and Democrat party officials from coast-to-coast. And after Arizona won in Federal court in 2009, but then had the law struck down by the ultra-liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, it is now up to the Supreme Court to set the record straight, and – we hope – upholds Proposition 200 and strikes down the disgraceful voter fraud machine knows as “Motor Voter”.
P.S. As an added irony to the case: a chief plaintiff is MALDEF: the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund, which has called the Arizona law “discriminatory” and “racist”. Yet Mexico itself requires a national voter ID card to vote. And citizens must present a birth certificate, another form of photo identification and a recent utility bill, or no dice. So why is it only “racist” when Arizona wants the same as does Mexico?
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Above: The Mexican national voter ID card, which requires proof if citizenship to obtain.
“Racist” in Arizona, says MALDEF. In Mexico? Not so much.
Arizona’s War Against Illegal Alien Voter Fraud Hits U.S. Supreme Court Today | Stand With Arizona
Top US Court Weighs Voter Law Against Illegal Immigrants
Kate Woodsome
March 18, 2013
Voice of America
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Monday on whether the state of Arizona has the right to craft its own voting laws to prevent illegal immigrants from casting ballots, a process critics say opens the door to discrimination against legal voters.
Arizona, which shares a border with Mexico, has some of the strongest anti-immigration laws in the United States and the voting rights case is the latest in its efforts to deal with non-U.S. citizens illegally in the state.
It is asking the Supreme Court to uphold a 2004 state law requiring local voting applicants to provide physical proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate, passport, tribal forms or a driver’s license.
Opponents of Arizona’s voter-approved Proposition 200 say it violates the decade-old National Voter Registration Act, a federal law requiring voting applicants to state they are U.S. citizens without providing any proof. People caught lying can face perjury charges.
Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne argued the constitutionality of Proposition 200 before the Court Monday, saying an “honor system” is not strong enough to prevent voter fraud.
Jesus Gonzalez is the lead plaintiff in the case. He tried to register to vote right after becoming a U.S. citizen but was rejected twice by state officials. Gonzalez used both his driver’s license and his naturalization certificate number, but officials said they still could not confirm his citizenship.
Civil rights groups supporting Gonzalez say his story is not uncommon. In a legal brief submitted to the court, the groups say more than 31,000 voting applicants were rejected between January 2005 and September 2007. Of that number, 11,000 eventually succeeded in registering to vote after repeated attempts.
The groups say Proposition 200 violates the U.S. Constitution “because it requires naturalized citizens - predominantly Latinos and Asians - to surmount additional and unique hurdles to exercise their fundamental right to vote.”
“The unique obstacles presented by the law effectively relegated this population to second-class citizenship,” they write in the brief.
The Obama administration is on their side, although it is focusing on another aspect of the case. It has filed court documents supporting the ruling of a federal appeals court, which ruled against Proposition 200 because it said federal law overrides state law.
The outcome of the case could determine how other states approach the issue. If the Supreme Court upholds Arizona’s request to determine its own voting guidelines, other states could follow suit, opening the door for new sets of rules like Florida’s attempt in 2005 to require voter applicants to prove their mental capacity.
Voter rights groups, including the Constitutional Accountability Center, expressed cautious optimism after Monday’s court arguments.
"A majority of the Court, including Justice [Anthony] Kennedy, appeared to recognize that the entire point of having a single federal form was to streamline the voter registration process, and that approving Arizona's law would pave the way for a patchwork of 50 state forms," Doug Kendall, the group’s president, said in a statement.
Even after the Supreme Court decides on this case, the battle over immigration is far from over. Arizona is at the center of a national debate on how to secure the country’s borders and treat the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. The issue is being tackled by lawmakers in Congress and advocacy groups across America.
Top US Court Weighs Voter Law Against Illegal Immigrants
