Arizona scored a big win in its battle against noncitizen voting. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Arizona could require proof of citizenship when registering voters — for the time being. That may seem like common sense, but the Left is determined to let noncitizens and illegal aliens vote in our elections.
Arizona’s battle to stop noncitizen voting exceeds a decade. After a trip to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013, Arizona was only allowed to require documentary proof of citizenship if voters registered using the state voter registration form. In 2018, the Left sued again, and the Arizona secretary of state traded away even that protection with a controversial agreement not to require proof of citizenship even when using the state form. The Arizona Legislature passed House Bill 2492 in 2022 to put an end to that practice and to prohibit people who have not proved citizenship from voting for the president or voting by mail. The Left promptly sued.
A federal district court enjoined all those provisions. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court, even going so far as to say the 2018 agreement prohibited the Arizona Legislature from requiring proof of citizenship for voters using the state registration form. Lawmaking is and should remain the express power of the legislature alone. Allowing an executive officer to unilaterally change election law is a dangerous precedent — especially when it comes as a result of partisan, left-wing lawfare.
An application for an emergency stay of the Ninth Circuit’s decision landed the parties before the Supreme Court, which restored Arizona’s proof of citizenship requirement. Arizona’s laws prohibiting voting for president and by mail without proving citizenship remain enjoined.
The lawfare in Arizona is just the latest in a long line of examples of the Left’s effort to eradicate protections against noncitizen voting. In fact, Arizona is not the only presidential battleground where they are unconcerned about noncitizen voting. Testimony delivered this May before Wisconsin lawmakers revealed there is currently no mechanism in place to identify if noncitizens are registered to vote or are voting. If the Left has its way, that will never be corrected. In fact, a Democrat member of the legislature ridiculed the idea of even needing to check because noncitizen voting is “highly unlikely.”
But we know that noncitizen voting happens, and Democrats know that too — just look at H.R. 1. This federal elections takeover bill, which passed the House in 2021 and that Democrats promise to bring back in 2025, grants amnesty for illegal registration or illegal voting by noncitizens. If it is not happening, why are Democrats in Congress trying to make it impossible to prosecute noncitizens who illegally vote? Perhaps the answer is that the Left wants as few of these offenses to get prosecuted as possible. A lack of prosecutions feeds their narrative that election fraud isn’t happening. And by the time any investigation and prosecution could take place, the damage is done. Illegal votes have been counted.
When the SAVE Act, Republican-led federal legislation to prohibit noncitizens from voting in federal elections, passed the House, the White House publicly committed to vetoing the bill. President Joe Biden asserted that the protections in place are sufficient, never mind liberal efforts to undermine them, and claimed the occurrence of noncitizen voting is “extraordinarily rare.” But let’s not forget, states like Virginia found thousands of noncitizens illegally registered on their voter rolls, Ohio just referred 138 instances of allegedly illegally cast ballots by noncitizens for investigation and studies estimate a significant amount of illegal aliens are currently registered to vote.
Then there is the outright pursuit of noncitizens voting in our elections. Deep blue cities like Washington, D.C., and New York City passed legislation expressly allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections. Now, a noncitizen from an enemy nation can weigh in on local politics in the nation’s capital. When Texas tried to enshrine a citizenship requirement for voting in its constitution, 54 House Democrats killed the measure — merely voting “present” and depriving the measure of the 12 votes necessary to put the issue before voters to decide.
The win in Arizona was a huge step in the right direction. Citizenship demonstrates allegiance and gives us a personal stake in the future of our nation. The Left’s fight to make it easy for noncitizens to vote will continue. We must stay engaged and persevere, and fight to ensure that only citizens vote in American elections.
Jackie Doyer is the Legal Policy Director of Honest Election Project Action.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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