AZ Voting Law Sparks Controversy Before Election

Thanks to an appeals court ruling, Arizona’s election may be a bit more secure this time around.

The court issued a temporary ruling that will require proof of citizenship in order to vote.

This will impact more than 30,000 voters who are currently on the Arizona voter rolls.

Odd Circumstance

Arizona has two different voter rolls, if you can believe that.

State law requires voters to provide proof of citizenship in order to vote, but that goes against federal voter law that does not require proof of citizenship.

So, when voters registered using the state form and they did not provide proof of citizenship, they were considered “federal only” voters, and not eligible to vote in state or local elections, but they could vote in House, Senate, and presidential elections.

The dual voter rolls were challenged, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a partial stay of the lower court ruling.

Now, the only way people can vote in the federal election without proof of citizenship is to use the federal voter registration form, which is something that few in the state request (the state registration form is the default form).

The stay of the lower court ruling will now be in place until the appeals court hears arguments, which will be in September, so this fight is far from over just yet.

The case was triggered in 2022 when Republicans started to pass legislation to restrict how federal-only voters could vote in elections.

Numerous groups sued to block the new legislation, which brings us to this standstill we have today.

Democrats have belittled the Republican effort by saying it is already against federal law to vote in an election unless you are a citizen, claiming very few foreigners actually vote in our elections.

They maintain that any non-citizen who votes would be committing a felony, and we all know people never break the law, right?

I would expect that Democrats will get the names of the 32,000 voters on the federal-only list and start walking federal voter registration forms to them to ensure they can vote come November.