Seeking to protect the rights of eligible voters in Arizona and Kansas, the voting rights organization Project Vote yesterday moved to intervene in the case of Kris W. Kobach et al. v. United States Election Assistance Commission. The states of Arizona and Kansas want to change the national voter registration form’s instructions to require that applicants in those states provide proof-of-citizenship documents in order to register to vote.
The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) made registration accessible to tens of millions of Americans by streamlining the registration process. One of the accomplishments of the NVRA was to create a simple federal voter registration form, which states are required to accept and use. This form does not currently require documentary proof of citizenship: applicants attest to their eligibility, including citizenship, under penalty of perjury, and the state’s voter registrar oversees who is added to the rolls.
This national voter registration form must be accepted by every state where the law applies, including Kansas and Arizona, which currently require documentary proof of citizenship to register using their state forms. Mandating that eligible Americans using the federal form also submit proof of citizenship would have a harmful impact on voting rights. In Arizona and Kansas, tens of thousands of eligible Americans have been rejected or suspended from the voter rolls, and community voter registration drives have been significantly hampered.
“The real effect of these types of laws is to limit who can vote,” says Michael Slater, executive director of Project Vote. “The intent of the NVRA was to simplify the registration process, but Arizona and Kansas want to take us backwards, and erect the very sorts of hurdles the NVRA was designed to remove.”
This lawsuit, which Arizona and Kansas officials filed against the U.S. Election Assistance Commission in August, follows the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last summer in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc. In June, the Court found that Arizona cannot require documentary proof of citizenship to be submitted with the federal voter registration form, because states are required to accept and use the form under the NVRA. Project Vote participated in the litigation culminating in the Supreme Court case; yesterday, Project Vote sought to enter this new case and continue its fight against these harmful requirements.
The proof-of-citizenship requirement has stymied voter registration in Arizona. Following enactment of the requirement in a ballot initiative known as Proposition 200, over 31,000 individuals were rejected for voter registration. Less than one-third of the rejected registrants subsequently registered to vote successfully. Voter registration through community-based drives in Arizona’s largest county, Maricopa, plummeted 44%. And in Kansas, where the proof-of-citizenship law took effect in 2013, the state’s requirement has already led to the suspension of thousands of registrations of otherwise eligible voters.
Project Vote is a national nonpartisan, non-profit organization that promotes voting in historically underrepresented communities, and takes a leadership role in nationwide voting rights and election administration issues through research, litigation, and advocacy.
Project Vote is represented by the law firm of Arnold and Porter LLP and the Thompson Law Firm, LLC, which are providing their services pro bono in the case.
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