AZ to seek dismissal of challenge to voter ID law
May 26th, 2008 @ 12:45pm
by Associated Press

State officials say a challenge to Arizona requirements for voter identification and proof of citizenship should be thrown out in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding Indiana's voter ID law.

The ruling on Indiana's law "leaves no room for doubt that Arizona's voting identification requirement is constitutional" and also backs up the requirement that people registering to vote prove their citizenship, Attorney General Terry Goddard and four assistants said in a brief filed in U.S. District Court.

Most but not all of the voting activists, tribes and other challengers to Arizona's law want to push ahead with their combined 2006 lawsuits, arguing that the Supreme Court's April 28 ruling in the Indiana case does not resolve all the issues at stake in Arizona.

The Arizona law was approved by voters in 2004 as Proposition 200 on that year's general election ballot. It requires voters to produce specified types of identification when casting ballots at polling places and to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote either for the first time or in a different county.

The Indiana ruling "provides little guidance to the court in this case" because of differences between the two states' laws and because many claims in the Arizona challenge didn't apply to the challenge to the Indiana law, attorney Nina Perales of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund wrote in a brief for one set of challengers.

U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver, who has scheduled a six-day trial starting July 1 in the Arizona case, had ordered the sides to file briefs analyzing the impact of the Indiana ruling.

In the Indiana case, the Supreme Court upheld a law requiring that voters produce photo identification before casting a ballot.

In arguments similar to those voiced in the Arizona case, Republicans said Indiana's identification requirement is fair and protects against voter fraud. Democrats said they keep out poor, older and minority voters.

In an opinion upholding the Indiana law, Justice John Paul Stevens said Indiana has a ``valid interest in protecting 'the integrity and reliability of the electoral process.'''

Two other justices joined Stevens' opinion, and three more agreed with the outcome though they wrote separately in support of voter ID laws. Three other justices dissented.

Goddard's brief said the ruling makes it clear that identification requirements are permissible. He also said challengers have failed to prove that the Arizona restrictions ``are excessively burdensome in light of those strong state interests.''

Silver dismissed some elements of the Arizona challenges in 2007 and the state now plans to ask for dismissal of the rest by the June 6 deadline for pretrial motions, Goddard said.

The challenges are based on claims that the law violates the U.S. Constitution's guarantee for equal protection under the law and federal statutes on civil rights and voting rights.

The challengers point to differences between the Arizona and Indiana laws, noting that the Indiana statute doesn't cover registration and that each law has provisions that the other lacks on such things as exemptions and specifics on identification required.

Also, the Indiana law was decided before the law was used the first time, but the Arizona law has already taken effect and been used.

Some 30,000 people have been denied registrations under the Arizona law and more than 4,000 provisional ballots have been cast but not counted because voters didn't later produce identification required under the law, challengers said in motions.

"And that says nothing of the deterrent effect the law has had on voters who are aware that they cannot meet the voter-identification requirements and thus do not appear at the polls," Perales wrote.

But Goddard said there's no proof so far that the affected people couldn't get the documents they need.

Separately, lawyers for the Navajo Nation have told Silver that the tribe has reached a settlement with Secretary of State Jan Brewer on revisions to election procedures on identification needed at polling place. Once those revisions are cleared by the U.S. Justice Department under a Voting Rights Act review, the Navajos' challenge will be dismissed, the notice said.






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