By Caitlin Sievers | AZ Mirror
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes has provided guidance to the state’s county recorders on how to handle a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court that changed the state’s voter registration law just 10 weeks before the election.
The nation’s high court on Aug. 22 ruled that Arizona can enforce part of a voter registration law that is being challenged in federal court, effectively allowing the state to bar some legal voters from registering to vote.
Arizona voters in 2004 approved a law that requires people to show proof of citizenship to register to vote. However, the federal National Voter Registration Act of 1993 requires states to accept federal voter registration forms, which do not have that requirement. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Arizona cannot reject those forms.
That created a dual system where voters who prove their citizenship can vote in every race on the ballot, while those who attest to being citizens under penalty of perjury but fail to provide documentation can only vote in federal contests. Arizona has approximately 32,000 “federal only” voters, many of whom are or were students.
