http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/breaking/070205prop.php
July 2, 2005

Proposition 200 voter ID proposal going to governor
The Associated Press

Secretary of State Jan Brewer and other Arizona leaders said yesterday that they have agreed on a plan to carry out Proposition 200's requirement that residents show identification before voting at the polls.
The plan gives voters more ways to prove their identity. But those with no identification could not be able to vote.

Voters would need to show one piece of photo identification with an address or at least two forms of nonphoto ID. Those could include utility and cell phone bills, tribal enrollment and Indian census cards or bank and credit union statements.

Brewer said the agreement was negotiated Thursday night with Attorney General Terry Goddard and Rep. Russell Pearce, Proposition 200's author.

Goddard said more details need to be worked out before the plan can be used in elections this year. He also noted that Gov. Janet Napolitano must sign off on the agreement, and she wasn't invited to Thursday night's negotiations.

The voting requirements of Proposition 200, the anti-illegal immigration measure approved by voters in November, have not been applied to elections this year because of a stalemate over the forms of identification required.

Goddard and Napolitano have worried that legitimate voters throughout the state could be denied the right to vote under a plan proposed earlier by Brewer. A main concern was that many Arizonans do not have identification containing their home addresses, as an earlier plan would have required.

"We have to figure out what various forms of ID are going to allow the maximum of eligible voters to vote without having to go through elaborate contortions to get the right documents," Goddard said.

An agreement on the proper forms of identification is considered essential this summer so any glitches in the new system can be worked out in this year's smaller elections.

Pearce said the most important part of the strategy remains the same, to keep people from casting fraudulent votes.

"If you don't have ID, you don't vote at the polls," said Pearce, R-Mesa, who crafted that portion of the measure to prevent illegal immigrants from committing voter fraud.

Napolitano twice vetoed Brewer's Republican-backed bills related to voter identification because they wouldn't allow registered voters who lost or forgot their identification to cast a provisional ballot that could later be verified.

Napolitano believed that some duly registered citizens could be disenfranchised by the new rules.

But if Napolitano signs off and it gains clearance from the Voting Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, it may be ready for municipal and local elections in November and May.