Arizona Voter Drives May be Undermined by Supreme Court’s Interference

(Latinas organizing voter outreach before 2022 midterms. Photo by Steven Rosenfeld)

In late August, the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority made registering to vote in Arizona messier and murkier in the final months of this year’s general election. 

In an appeal brought by the Republican National Committee, the court’s ruled that Arizona residents must provide documented proof of their US citizenship when registering to vote using the state’s voter registration form – entitling them to cast ballots in Arizona’s local, state and federal elections. 

Voters who don’t have citizenship documents (like passports and birth certificates) can still register and vote, but only in Arizona’s federal elections for Congress and president. They must use a different form – a federal voter application. Only Kansas, among all other states, has a similar proof-of-citizenship requirement. (The other states have new registrants sign an oath attesting to their credentials and face criminal penalties if they lie.) 

Arizona’s new voter registration variables can be hard to explain – especially to new voters. The court’s August 22 ruling affects any Arizonan who plans to register to vote between now and October 7, when Arizona closes registration for the November 5 election. Experts estimate that 1-in-10 voters don’t have easy access to citizenship documents. 

The concrete impacts of the court’s ruling are slowly coming into view. The biggest question concerns whether thousands of new voters would be blocked. Nearly two decades ago, Arizona had a similar citizenship requirement – which courts ultimately threw out – and between 10,000 and 20,000 voter applications were disqualified in greater Phoenix, where about two-thirds of the state’s voters live. Similar numbers of voters were blocked in Kansas, the only other state requiring the citizenship documentation.

The politics surrounding the requirement are not new. Republicans have fanned fears that illegal voting is rampant among migrants who are not citizens, which is as illusory as it is preposterous. Any migrant who is here legally or illegally is not going to tempt their arrest by signing a voter application, which would be tantamount to signing a criminal confession.

But the high court’s last-minute interference is impacting election officials, groups organizing voter registration drives, and would-be voters, albeit in different ways.

Election officials say they can adjust procedurally with their operations, but they don’t like last-minute changes that confuse or discourage voters (and upend their work flows). As Arizona Democrat and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said in a statement issued immediately after the ruling was issued, “My concern is that changes to the process should not occur this close to an election; it creates confusion for voters.” 

Arizona’s counties have since updated the state’s voter registration form. Unlike two decades ago when Arizona last had the proof-of-citizenship requirement on its books, election officials said Arizona’s counties – which run their elections – have more options to register, especially using online portals. Officials want any would-be voter to register, and stand ready to help.

“It’s not like it’s gutting the system and rebuilding it,” said Taylor Kinnerup, communication director for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, which runs elections in greater Phoenix. “No one should hit the panic button because this is what we work on with voters.”

The larger and possibly negative impact is likely to be on voter registration drives. 

In previous years, voter drives have registered hundreds of thousands of Arizonans in the election’s final months. In anticipation of that trend continuing (and before the court’s ruling), Fontes’s office designed a web portal for groups to use to submit applications. JP Martin, Fontes’s deputy communications director, said 40 organizations were poised to use that tool this fall. 

The key question for voter drives now becomes which voter registration form will they use – the state form (requiring citizenship documentation) or the federal form (not requiring it). And, equally important, how is the public reacting to this new bureaucratic impediment?

Many pro-voting groups associated with empowering Arizona voters and planning voter drives were fast to criticize the Supreme Court’s ruling. But when contacted for this report and asked about their concrete responses, they avoided comment. (Those groups include All Voting is Local, Common Cause, Poder LatinX, and Living United for Change in Arizona.) 

Perhaps it is too soon to comment. But the collective silence seems notable. There’s ample history to suggest the court’s ruling will disrupt their efforts. Twenty years ago, when Arizona instituted a similar proof-of-citizenship requirement for several election cycles, between 10,000 and 20,000 registrants were blocked in Maricopa County alone in each election, New York University Law School’s Brennan Center for Justice reported in a 2021 policy brief. 

“The experience in Arizona and Kansas shows that documentary proof of citizenship laws creates a significant obstacle to voter registration,” the Center’s Ian Vandewalker wrote.

Looking toward November’s election, neither Martin nor Kinnerup was aware of how groups or political parties planning voter drives might change their practices.  

“We are not aware of what nonprofits or political parties are doing,” Martin said.

A Big Voting Bloc

As the 2024 general election approaches, pro-Trump Republicans – including the Republican National Committee – have filed numerous suits to try to winnow the number of likely Democrats on the front end of the voting process. They have also tried to position party loyalists at the finish line to potentially disqualify ballots in key jurisdictions that will determine victory margins. 

The proof-of-citizenship requirement could be a significant impediment to Arizonans who have not voted before – such as students – and are being encouraged to do so by the major parties’ nominees. 

In Arizona’s 2020 presidential election, 10,457 votes separated the winner, Democrat Joe Biden, from Republican Donald Trump. In Maricopa County, 165,000 people registered to vote in the 90 days before November 2020’s Election Day, according to county officials. 

Another 181,500 people unnecessarily submitted registration forms in the final 90 days of 2020’s election, officials said. Those Arizonans were already registered to vote. However, officials said they likely were prodded by registration drives or alarmist media to re-register (instead of going online and verifying their status). Another 274,000 Maricopa County residents updated their voter registration information – such as their address or married name.

Those figures underscore that Arizona’s newly registered voters are a sizable bloc. Unlike in previous years, however, there are more ways to register to vote and quickly address issues rising from incomplete applications – especially if people use county registration portals.

After the Democratic National Convention, registrations surged nationally among young women of color. Unregistered Arizonans now face a split-screen scenario. They have to decide between using a state form (requiring citizenship proof) or a federal form (requiring an oath, not documentation). Depending on what form is used, their November ballot will differ. 

Predictable Rhetoric, Unpredictable Response

The initial reactions to the Supreme Court’s ruling were as swift as they were predictable. Liberals cringed. Republicans cheered. Legal scholars frowned. 

“This Arizona case is not an isolated incident,” blogged Hannah Fried, executive director of All Voting is Local, a national pro-voting group active in Arizona. “It is part of a broader agenda to undermine access to the ballot for voters of color and signals support for racist and xenophobic policies rooted in conspiracy theories. The implications for Arizona, and indeed for the entire nation, are profound.”

“This is a huge win,” Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump told Fox News. “Look, when a federal election is underway, you can only have American citizens voting in that election. Should go without saying, but there are some states that try to push back on that. We took it to the Supreme Court because Democrats in the state of Arizona were attempting to let people register to vote without ID.”

Election law scholars criticized the court’s timing and the ruling’s merits, saying noncitizen voting was a fake issue whereas disenfranchising otherwise eligible voters was real. 

“They stand to literally disenfranchise thousands of eligible voters for no good reason,” wrote UCLA Law School’s Rick Hasen. “The law that AZ put in place that the Court today allows to be enforced is bad and unnecessary… The law is based upon the false premise that noncitizen voting is a large problem in the United States. It is not.”

What Will Voter Drives Do?

The largest looming question is how will the ruling affect 2024’s yet-to-register voters. 

Election officials delicately suggested that new voters avoid the registration drives and directly interact with county offices. 

Maricopa’s Kinnerup said her county has an online portal – at BeBallotReady.vote – where people can register and update their information, such as changing their address or their surname if they recently married.

She said that the field workers hired by registration groups do not always fill out all of the information on applications. For example, she said her office sends staff to US naturalization ceremonies to stamp the citizenship documents and expedite registering to vote. But activists seeking to register new citizens after those events don’t always properly fill out the paperwork, she said. In some cases, that prevents the newest citizens’ registrations from being quickly approved. She also said that workers hired by voter drives often leave off the voter’s contact information, which makes it harder for officials to find registrants if problems arise. 

“They’re going for volume,” Kinnerup said. “They’re not necessarily going for accuracy.” 

Unfortunately, no group doing or planning voter drives in Arizona wanted to comment about how their field teams were changing their outreach in response to the Supreme Court’s proof-of-citizenship ruling. 

In coming weeks, election officials will see whether new registrants are using the state or the federal form. But on the day the Supreme Court ruled, Fontes telegraphed what may be the simplest solution for Arizona’s newest voters. 

At the bottom of his press release was a link to the federal voter registration form.