Twenty-four states have joined together to support Arizona’s proof-of-citizenship law for voter registration.
The coalition comes as a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court struck down the law earlier this month.
According to the ruling, individuals can register to vote in federal elections without proving they are U.S. citizens.
The attorney generals, alongside the Republican National Committee (RNC), filed a brief with the Supreme Court, arguing that recent rulings are “chipping away Arizona’s authority to secure its own elections.”
According to the states, the idea that the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) “preempts Arizona’s election integrity rules as it relates to voting in presidential elections and mail-in voting” is wrong, for that determination is a “direct threat to the States’ ability to police voter fraud and their sovereign right to define their political communities.”
The filing further states that the Supreme Court could “grant relief here just by acknowledging that Arizona has a right to set its own voters’ qualifications, and registration is a qualification to vote that the NVRA does not alter.”
In other words, the filing centers around state sovereignty. “Per Arizona law, the only people who may vote in presidential elections are those who provide documentation of citizenship when they registered via the State Form or, if they are registering with the Federal Form, who have had their citizenship verified,” the filing reads. “Thus, the Arizona Legislature directed that Arizona’s presidential electors will be selected by only those voters who have proven U.S. citizenship.”
The states involved in the filing include Kansas, West Virginia, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Virginia.
Concerns of non-citizen participation in U.S. elections has increased as the “number of aliens in the United States has undeniably grown,” the attorney generals wrote. “Each of those aliens represents another possible opening for voter fraud, for each represents a probability—no matter how small—that they will vote illegally. Add to that the other possible sources of noncitizen voting—such as aliens here legally but who cannot vote or who have overstayed their visas—and the magnitude of the problem becomes clear,” they added.
Earlier this week, the RNC sent letters to the Secretaries of State in California, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Nevada, New York, and Wisconsin, demanding proof of citizenship in elections.
“There is no place for non-citizens to influence or decide our elections, yet these states turn a blind eye, or worse, dismantle election safeguards,” the RNC wrote in a release. “Democrats in Congress have opposed a commonsense fix to stop non-citizen voting, and states must enforce the law.”
