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Supreme Court strikes Arizona proof-of-citizenship law
Story Date: 6/18/2013
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Source: Tom Johnston, MEATINGPLACE, 6/17/13
The Supreme Court today ruled that Arizona violated federal law by adding a proof-of citizenship requirement to a standard federal voter registration form.
The ruling comes a year after the Supreme Court scrapped most of another Arizona law meant to crack down on illegal immigrants seeking employment.
Justice Antonin Scalia, who delivered the court’s final opinion, said that states must “accept and use” a federal voter-registration form, which only requires a voting applicant to certify, under penalty of perjury, that he is a citizen. Arizona law stipulates that voter-registration officials “reject” any application, including the federal form, that doesn’t also come with documentary evidence of citizenship.
Arizona contends that its law complements rather than interferes with federal rules, and infers that federal law only require the state to use the federal form as one element of the voter registration process.
But the court (by a vote of 7-2) disagreed, saying that Arizona did not have the power to unilaterally add requirements to the standard federal form.
The court noted, however, that states still can use their own voter-registration forms in addition to the federal form, and Arizona can require proof of citizenship when using the state form. Arizona also could crosscheck information from the federal form to ensure accuracy. Beyond that, Arizona also can ask the federal Election Assistance Commission to add state instructions to the federal form, the ruling states.
Two groups of plaintiffs — a group of individual Arizona residents and a group of nonprofit organizations led by the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona — filed separate lawsuits seeking to enjoin the voting provisions of Arizona’s proof-of-citizenship rule, called Proposition 200, originally adopted in 2004. They argued that the proof-of-citizenship requirements made it harder to get people to vote.
For more stories, go to http://www.meatingplace.com/.
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