I have been registered to vote in Arizona for some 45 years. I have voted in every primary and general election. I have run for precinct committeman and been elected on numerous occasions over these years.
Now the MAGA/QAnon cult Big Lie election conpiracy theorists want me to provide proof of citizenship, and force me to reregister to vote? Fuck you Jake Hoffman, and all of you fascists!
Critics say GOP bill would force unknown number of Arizonans to re-register to vote:
Another Republican attempt to force federal-only voters to provide documentation of citizenship may also force an unknown number of Arizonans to re-register to vote.
House Bill 2492, sponsored by [Fake GQP Elector under investigation for election fraud by the DOJ] Rep. Jake Hoffman (R-Queen Creek) attempts to make election officials apply citizenship standards to voters registering with a federal voter registration form. Officials who fail to follow the proposed law would be guilty of a felony.
But election officials say it’s illegal to follow Hoffman’s proposal. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a citizenship requirement for Arizona voters can’t be applied to the federal voter registration form. As a result, Arizona has a bifurcated system that allows federally-registered voters to vote in federal elections, but not state races.
June 2013: Supreme Court Strikes Down Arizona Voting Law:
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday struck down a state-mandated requirement that prospective voters in Arizona provide proof of citizenship to be able to register to vote in national elections.
The case before the court involved a federal law that allows people to register to vote by mail using a federal form that requires the registrant to swear, under penalty of perjury, that he or she is a citizen. Arizona went further than the federal law and added a requirement that the registrant provide a passport, birth certificate or other proof of citizenship to register.
Writing for the court majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, which requires states to “accept and use” the simple federal form, replaced more complicated state forms like Arizona’s. And the court said that if the state wanted to add requirements, it had to get permission from the federal Election Assistance Commission set up under the law. If the state was unable to prevail at the commission level, the court said, it could then appeal to the federal courts.
“No matter what procedural hurdles a State’s own form imposes, the Federal Form guarantees that a simple means of registering to vote in federal elections will be available,” Scalia wrote.
But the Supreme Court, by a 7-2 vote, invalidated the state requirement as pre-empted by federal law.
Yeah, the legislative attorneys say it's illegal. But that didn't stop GOP lawmakers from sending a bill to @DougDucey that courts new litigation but also could force many Arizonans who have been voting for years to dig out new citizenship proof. https://t.co/7gdk4mLdfl
— Capitol Media Services 📢 Telling it like it is (@azcapmedia) March 28, 2022
Critics also warn that in Hoffman’s attempt to check the citizenship status of federal-only voters, he’s also putting the registration of potentially thousands of Arizonans at risk. That’s because the citizenship requirement would now apply to voters who haven’t changed their registration since 2005 — before the state adopted the law requiring proof of citizenship when registering to vote.
Voters who haven’t updated their registration since 2005 would have to re-register, said Marilyn Rodriguez, a lobbyist for the ACLU.
“So many thousands of eligible voters could lose access to the polls based on specific and targeted criteria,” she told the Senate Government Committee earlier this month. “This bill singles out older voters, on average, and people who have lived in Arizona for a longer amount of time.”
Backers of the bill, which is supported by the [Fascist] Free Enterprise Club, dispute that it applies retroactively.
But Jen Marson, the executive director for the Arizona Association of Counties, said counties would have to comb through voter registration databases if HB 2492 is signed into law.
And depending on how long the legislative session lasts, county’s may be required to do that in the middle of the 2020 election season.
Bills take effect 90 days after the end of session. If the session ends in May or June, HB 2492 would take effect in August or September, in between the primary and general midterm elections.
The bill has already been approved by the full House and Senate on a party-line vote, and awaits Gov. Doug Ducey’s signature or veto.
🚨ALERT: Arizona Legislature passes #HB2492, a bill requiring all voters to prove citizenship. The bill risks disenfranchisement for voters who registered before 2004 or used federal forms as they didn't have to submit proof of citizenship when registering.https://t.co/p70k5ydEX0
— Democracy Docket (@DemocracyDocket) March 24, 2022
Jake Johnson adds, Arizona Senate Approves GOP Bill That Could Spur US’s “Most Extreme Voter Purge”:
The Arizona Senate on Wednesday passed a Republican-authored bill that advocates warn could prompt “the most extreme voter purge in the country” by requiring state residents to retroactively provide proof of citizenship to stay on the rolls.
Marilyn Rodriguez, founder of the Arizona-based firm Creosote Partners, argued in a Twitter thread that H.B. 2492 is a “monumentally terrible attack on our elections.”
“Take the proof of citizenship requirement for voter registration, which was adopted in ’04. By making this a requirement for voters, this bill would retroactively apply it to the millions of AZ voters registered before the proof of citizenship law took effect 18 years ago,” Rodriguez explained. “Arizona is the only state in the nation with a documentary proof of citizenship requirement currently in force, but it exempts previously registered voters. But this bill would do away with that protection.”
Without intervention by the Arizona Supreme Court, Rodriguez continued, “the clear language here means that to be eligible to vote — regardless of when you registered — you need to have shown proof of citizenship.”
“Imagine how many of Arizona’s 4.35 million registered voters would be immediately forced off the rolls or given just 30 days to provide proof of their citizenship, such as a birth or naturalization certificate,” she wrote. “This is a recipe for chaos, not election integrity, and it would likely cut the state’s electorate in half overnight. If Arizona proceeds with this bill, it will draw numerous lawsuits and be in lonely, uncharted waters defending the indefensible.”
ust one of a slew of voter suppression measures that the GOP-controlled Arizona legislature is currently working to advance — including a bill to abolish early voting — H.B. 2492 now heads to Republican Gov. Doug Ducey’s desk, having passed the state House last month along party lines.
* * *
Arizona Republicans, as evidenced by H.B. 2492 and other legislation, have yet to abandon their unfounded narrative that the state’s election system is riddled with unlawful voting and “foreign interference.”
“A group of Arizona legislators continue to directly attack democracy and voting rights using every tool at their disposal,” Alex Gulotta, Arizona state director of All Voting Is Local, said in a statement Wednesday. “Ducey must veto H.B. 2492, which creates illegal barriers to voting for the people of Arizona by imposing improper requirements on voter registration.”
Gulotta warned that the legislation, sponsored by state Rep. Jake Hoffman (R-12), requires “anyone who registered to vote before 2005 to provide additional documentation” and “targets voters born outside the United States for special scrutiny and investigation.”
“Bills like this one are being passed through the Arizona legislature to appease a small, but loud group of legislators who are basing their decisions on unfounded claims from the sham election review conducted by the discredited and defunct Cyber Ninjas,” said Gulotta. “This is the latest anti-voter measure from a group of legislators who are more interested in grabbing power than protecting the will of the people. Even though their own Senate rules attorney told them this bill was illegal, they continue to recklessly squander taxpayer money by provoking inevitable and expensive litigation.”
“Across the country, Republican state legislators are trying to purge voters and erect massive barriers to the ballot box in order to choose their voters and exclude everyone else,” said Christina Harvey, executive director of Stand Up America. “Arizona’s H.B. 2492 is one of the most egregious examples of anti-voter legislation being peddled by the GOP under the guise of election integrity.”
“But there’s no hiding their true intentions; this bill places a disproportionate — and often insurmountable — burden on older, minority, and low-income voters,” Harvey added. “A vote for H.B. 2492 is a vote to disenfranchise Arizonans. Governor Ducey must now decide whether he’s on the side of everyday Arizonans or the Republican legislators who are trying to silence their voices.”
Take Action Now: please email Governor Doug Ducey and demand that he vetoes HB2492 immediately. If you’d prefer to make a phone call, you can reach Governor Ducey’s office at (602) 542-4331 and press 4 to leave a message.
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Laurie Roberts writes at The Republic, “Republicans want HOW MANY Arizonans to prove they have a right to vote?”, https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/2022/03/28/arizona-voters-may-soon-prove-right-vote-citizenship/7192260001/
The Great Arizona Voter Purge rages on, as our leaders continue their temper tantrum over Donald Trump’s loss.
This time, it appears they’re going after nearly 200,000 of Arizona’s oldest voters, people who’ve been casting ballots in the state for 25 years or more.
If you registered to vote in Arizona before Oct. 1, 1996, and haven’t updated your driver’s license or voter registration since then, you, too, are apparently suspect.
In the eyes of the GOP-run Arizona Legislature, that is.
Attorneys say the bill is likely unconstitutional
Doesn’t matter that legislative attorneys in both the House and Senate warned our leaders that the bill is likely unconstitutional. Doesn’t matter that the state would have to spend millions of dollars to defend it from the inevitable lawsuit, should this bill become law.
Doesn’t even seem to matter that it could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of long-time voters unless they can now prove that they are U.S. citizens.
House Bill 2492 already passed the House and Senate on party-line votes and is awaiting Gov. Doug Ducey’s signature.
This bill comes to you courtesy of Rep. Jake Hoffman, a Queen Creek Republican who assures us that his proposal is “an incredibly well-crafted piece of legislation” that won’t disenfranchise anyone who is legally entitled to vote.
“This bill does nothing other than to ensure that non-citizens are not voting in Arizona elections and American elections,” he said, in pushing the bill through the House.
You’ll excuse me if I find it difficult to take his assurances at face value.
Hoffman is casting doubt on long-running voters
Hoffman is the hard-right first-term legislator best known for running a disinformation campaign aimed at getting Donald Trump re-elected in 2020. He hired teens to post conservative talking points and baseless conspiracy theories on social media, casting doubt on the integrity of mail-in ballots and trumpeting the baseless claim that 28 million of them have gone missing in the past four elections.
He went on to become one of the state’s fake electors, signing a documenting falsely avowing that Donald Trump won Arizona.
Now he’s casting doubt about some of Arizona’s longest running voters[?]
His HB 2492 would require election officials to verify the citizenship of anyone who registered to vote using a federal form that requires only that you avow – but not prove – that you are a citizen.
His bill may be aimed at Arizona’s 31,000 “federal-only” voters, the ones who cannot vote in state elections but are entitled to cast a ballot for president and Congress. But some elections experts contend his bill also may send longtime voters scrambling to prove they really are citizens.
These are people who registered to vote using a driver’s license issued before Oct. 1, 1996, in the days before proof of citizenship was required, and haven’t updated their licenses or their voter registration since then.
In 2004, voters adopted a proof-of-citizen requirement to register to vote but they specifically exempted anyone who was already registered so as not to disenfranchise boatloads of voters.
Voters could be purged until they prove citizenship
But Tom Collins, executive director of the Citizens Clean Elections Commission, told Capitol Media Services’ Howard Fischer that Hoffman’s bill does not contain similar wording to grandfather in those long-established voters.
If Ducey signs this bill, roughly 191,000 voters could find themselves purged from the voter rolls unless they can prove they are U.S. citizens.
The bill requires county elections workers to sift through voter lists and check them against sometimes-unreliable citizenship databases, purging those whose birth places cannot be verified and sending those registrations to the attorney general for investigation and possible criminal prosecution.
Both House and Senate attorneys have advised the Legislature that the bill violates the National Voter Registration Act. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court already has said so.
In a 2013 decision, the high court ruled that while Arizona can demand proof of citizenship from those wanting to vote in state and local elections, it cannot supercede federal law, which requires only an avowal of citizenship to vote in federal elections.
None of which mattered a whit to Hoffman or his fellow Republican legislators, who went on to the pass the bill anyway and send it to the governor.
It would even bar voters who haven’t provided proof of citizenship from voting in presidential elections or from getting an early ballot. They still could go to the polls to vote in congressional elections.
Most likely, this is just a witch hunt
Hoffman contends they would have no right to cast votes for president, because the Constitution gives state legislators the authority to decide how presidential electors are chosen. (An authority that the Arizona Legislature long ago gave to voters.)
Hoffman insists his bill is constitutional [it’s not] and will root out foreigners who seek to influence our elections.
“HB 2492 is an incredibly well-crafted piece of legislation that is on sound legal footing and broadly supported by voters of all political parties,” he told Fischer. Nor is he worried about litigation. “I am confident that should Democrats challenge HB 2492 in court it will only serve to further reinforce its clear constitutionality.” [He is a fucking idiot.]
And I am confident that taxpayers will be shelling out a few million dollars defending this unconstitutional witch hunt.
All because Hoffman is upset that roughly 7,000 federal-only voters cast ballots for president in Arizona in 2020. Even assuming every one of those voters was a foreign actor and every one of them voted for Biden, Trump still would have lost.
But hey, don’t let that get in the way of logic or the Constitution.
Or the rights of up to 200,000 longtime Arizonans who suddenly may find themselves scrambling to hang onto their vote.
Trevor Potter, a former chair of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and currently president of Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to advancing American democracy through law, including the fight against what’s best described as anti-vote legislation that the Arizona Legislature just passed, writes “This Arizona bill could keep you from voting early, by mail or for president”, https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2022/03/27/arizona-bill-could-keep-you-voting-early-president/7158739001/
House Bill 2492 makes it harder for eligible Arizonans to vote. The bill knowingly violates federal law and will absolutely result in a costly lawsuit – and Arizona taxpayers will be the ones to foot the bill.
The bill makes disruptive changes to Arizona’s voting and registration systems and needlessly creates more barriers for voters. It requires documentary proof of citizenship and a voter’s place of birth before registering to vote – targeting naturalized American citizens, complicating voter registration and going beyond what federal courts have said is allowable under the law.
In 2018, the Campaign Legal Center sued Arizona over its “dual registration system,” which placed voters on one of two lists: those who could gather and pay for specific documents to prove their citizenship could vote in both state and federal elections, and those who did not submit proof of citizenship – but were otherwise still eligible to vote – could only vote in federal elections.
HB 2492 takes it one step further, targeting those in the latter category by prohibiting them from using early voting and vote-by-mail options in any election and preventing them from voting in presidential elections at all. Essentially, these voters will only be able to vote for congressional candidates and can only vote in-person on Election Day.
These new restrictions make the registration and voting process unnecessarily complicated, creating significant barriers for eligible voters and an administrative nightmare for election officials.
Even longtime registered voters could now have to jump through hoops and incur costs just to prove they are American citizens and cast a ballot.
Lawmakers’ attorneys said this violates the law
The legislation also requires county recorders, nonpartisan election officials trying to administer free and fair elections, to purge voter registrations of eligible voters by checking against unreliable citizenship databases or risk facing felony prosecutions.
This requirement to use stale and error-prone data to verify citizenship harms naturalized citizens who are fully eligible to vote. Federal courts in Florida and Texas recently ruled that similar processes violate federal law.
Troublingly, this bill also gives the state attorney general a vague and overbroad mandate to initiate criminal investigations based on faulty data – opening the door to wrongful prosecutions and harassment of nonpartisan election officials and eligible voters.
In a recent hearing, the Arizona Legislature’s own nonpartisan legal counsel admitted that HB 2492 violates federal law. One of the proponents acknowledged that a motivation behind this bill is to challenge the constitutionality of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), an important federal law that helps ensure equal access to voter registration for all eligible Americans.
Arizona already tried to limit the NVRA and lost in the Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision written by Justice Antonin Scalia. That failed anti-voter endeavor cost Arizona taxpayers more than $1.94 million.
Gov. Doug Ducey must veto HB 2492
H.B. 2492 doesn’t improve the security or accuracy of Arizona’s elections; it just makes it harder for Arizonans to exercise their freedom to vote. There are better ways to safeguard our elections and achieve a more representative democracy.
Arizona has a choice between a democracy that includes all eligible voters and a system that excludes people arbitrarily based on their background or the documents they have handy. We need policies that make it easier, not harder, for eligible voters to make their voices heard.
Signing this bill into law will almost certainly mean another costly lawsuit and, once again, Arizona voters and taxpayers will pay the price.
The good news is that this bill can still be stopped. Gov. Doug Ducey can stand up for Arizona’s taxpayers, voters and our American democracy by vetoing this bill.