What Arizona voters need to know about the 2024 election
Voters in Arizona will play a key role in deciding the next president of the United States. Here’s everything you need to know about the upcoming election in November.
The Republic
The nation’s highest court on Thursday granted a partial stay limiting the ability of Arizona residents to register to vote without proof of citizenship. The crucial decision could have significant implications for the presidential race and voter registration laws in other states.
The news comes after Republicans at the state and federal levels have sought to enforce provisions of a recently enacted law that tightens voter requirements. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court for consideration after a federal judge blocked certain provisions of the law last year, setting off a series of appeals that have so far been unsuccessful. The case is part of a larger legal battle raging in Arizona over voter registration laws at a key time before the November election.
Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, who oversees the petitions from Arizona and other states in the Ninth Circuit, referred the petition to the full court.
Ultimately, there was disagreement on the issue. The order states that Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, some of the most conservative members of the court, granted the request in its entirety. Kagan, along with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson, denied it in its entirety.
The decision means that voters who attempt to register without proof of citizenship using Arizona’s voter registration form will be rejected in the future, pending an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and any requests for reconsideration. Voters who attempt to register to vote using the federal form without providing proof of citizenship will still be registered. Previously, such voters could use either document.
However, other aspects of the Republicans’ request were rejected in the ruling, including the requirement to exclude so-called “federal-only voters” from voting in the presidential election and to exclude those voters from voting by mail. Those voters will still be able to vote in presidential and congressional elections, but not in state and local elections.
Several other cases concerning voter registration laws are still pending in Arizona’s lower courts.
Nationwide, voter registration forms typically require voters to attest that they are American citizens. Voters do so under penalty of perjury, meaning they can face criminal charges if they are found to have made false statements. Arizona is the only state in the country that also requires voters to provide a birth certificate, passport or one of a handful of other documents proving their citizenship.
About 42,000 Arizona residents have failed to provide such proof, creating a unique two-track system. Federal courts have repeatedly ruled that state legislatures can exclude voters who lack citizenship documents from participating in state and local elections, but must allow voters who are only federal citizens to participate in federal elections, including the upcoming presidential, Senate and congressional elections.
Studies have repeatedly shown that voter fraud is rare. Noncitizens who try to vote risk fines, jail time, deportation, and having their naturalization process obstructed. A recent analysis by Votebeat found that federal-only voters are disproportionately young people on college campuses who don’t have access to their citizenship documents.
These voters make up only about 1% of all registered voters in the state. Yet every vote could be crucial to the outcome of the important presidential election. In 2020, the contest was decided by fewer than 11,000 votes.
The issue is attracting a lot of attention from political groups and other states
Before Kagan’s decision, several political organizations and two dozen state attorneys general filed briefs on the case.
Some conservative groups, such as the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, are based in Phoenix. Others, such as the Honest Elections Project and the Immigration Reform Law Institute, are based in other parts of the country. They portrayed the case as a test of states’ rights and expressed concern that noncitizen voting could affect the outcome of Arizona’s elections.
“Upholding the Honest Elections Project’s decision would create massive uncertainty across the country and jeopardize the integrity of Arizona’s elections,” attorneys for the Honest Elections Project wrote in a brief.
However, Arizona officials said changing voter registration procedures so close to an important election could “create chaos and confusion and, in turn, undermine the credibility of our elections.”
“The petitioners have no compelling interest in depriving federal-only voters of their fundamental constitutional right to elect or vote early for the President of the United States,” attorneys for Secretary of State Adrian Fontes wrote in a response to the request for an emergency stay. “And there cannot be.”
U.S. Attorney General Elizabeth Prelogar echoed those concerns in her own brief, arguing that the National Voting Registration Act overrides state law regarding elections to federal office. She wrote that the law aims to “simplify” voter registration in federal elections and is a response to previous “discriminatory and unfair registration laws” that disproportionately affected certain groups, including non-white voters.
Before 2013, Arizona was one of nine states that had to submit changes to election laws and district maps to the federal government for review before they could implement them. Some communities in a handful of other states had to undergo the same process, known as “preclearance.” The Voting Rights Act required this for jurisdictions with a long history of discriminatory voting practices, but it was later overturned by the Supreme Court.
“The NVRA embodies Congress’s assessment that making voter registration easier is a laudable goal to be pursued, not a source of harm to be avoided,” Prelogar wrote in a brief. “Increased voter turnout is therefore not considered irreparable harm.”
Meanwhile, Republican politicians in other states who may want to pass similar laws urged the court to grant an extraordinary stay.
The letter was written by attorneys general in Kansas and West Virginia. Officials in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Virginia also signed the document.
This list includes all states, except Georgia and Mississippi, that previously had a full pre-approval requirement.
“What happens in Arizona does not stay in Arizona,” the letter says. “Illegal voting” is a threat to states across the country and officials should have the opportunity to take “common sense election security measures.”
How voter rolls are verified in Arizona
Voters who vote only at the federal level do not have to provide proof of citizenship with their registration form, but will still be checked.
State law requires county registrars to use “all available resources to verify the citizenship status” of voters. This includes verifying the citizenship status of voters who are only federal citizens, when possible, with an immigration status verification service provided by the Department of Homeland Security. This system requires specific identification numbers that county officials do not have for every voter who is only a federal citizen.
The voter rolls are also regularly verified using information from the U.S. Social Security Administration, the U.S. Postal Service, the Arizona Department of Health Services, the Arizona Department of Transportation and the Maricopa County Jury Commissioner’s Office.
If another government agency notifies election officials that an eligible voter is not a citizen, that person will be removed from the voter rolls.
Sasha Hupka covers county government and election administration for The Arizona Republic. Reach her at [email protected]. Follow her on X: @SashaHupka. Follow her on Instagram or threads: @sashahupkasnaps. Sign up for her weekly election newsletter, Republic Recount.
