Last week, the Biden Administration officially filed a lawsuit against Arizona over HB2492, which bolsters safeguards to our voter registration process to require proof of citizenship ensuring only U.S. citizens are voting in our elections.
To many, it sounds absurd. Not HB2492, but the revelation that in Arizona, and in every state in the country, people are registering to vote and voting without ever providing proof of citizenship.
How many people are we talking about? In 2020, there were roughly 11,600 individuals in Arizona who voted in federal elections without ever having provide proof of citizenship. That’s up from under 2,000 just two years prior in the 2018 midterms. These numbers are alarming, but the exponential growth from just one election to the next is even more shocking. Currently, there are 13,330 active voters who have not provided proof of citizenship, more than 6,000 of which are on the Active Early Voter List (previously PEVL) in Maricopa County alone.
You can find out how this happened and how we went from rejecting all voter registration applications without (Documentary Proof of Citizenship) DPOC in 2005 to registering all individuals, whether they used our own state form or the federal form, as “Federal Only Voters” here.
Thankfully, back in March HB2492, sponsored by Representative Jake Hoffman, was signed into law. It was the first election integrity bill to pass out of the legislature, and the first signed. In short, HB2492 cracks down on state voter registration forms submitted without DPOC, requires counties to attempt to ascertain the citizenship status for those who utilize the federal form, and, importantly, makes proof of citizenship a requirement to vote by mail and to vote for President. A full breakdown of the bill can be found here.
This was one of the most critical and impactful election integrity reforms of the legislative session. And that can be seen from the two lawsuits filed within hours of it being signed, one coming from Democrat Russiagate hoax lawyer Marc Elias, and both on behalf of liberal nonprofit organizations. It becomes clearer from the third lawsuit filed last month from another leftist group, and now with this case, officially USA v. Arizona, coming from Biden.
These lawsuits all make nearly identical claims and arguments, all of which are flawed, because HB2492 is well crafted and stands on strong constitutional reasoning.
HB2492 requires counties to reject state voter registration forms that are submitted without proof of citizenship, which the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed our authority to do in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc.: “States retain the flexibility to design and use their own registration forms.”
HB2492 requires counties to reject federal voter registration forms if, after checking the various databases HB2492 requires them to review, they find that the person is not a U.S. citizen. Justice Scalia wrote that the NVRA “does not preclude States from ‘deny[ing] registration based on information in their possession establishing the applicant’s ineligibility.” So yet again, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed our power to do this.
HB2492 makes proof of citizenship a requirement to vote for President and by mail in any election. The Electors Clause of the U.S. Constitution grants plenary authority to state legislatures over the manner of appointing presidential electors. While this argument has not been made to the courts, once again the plain text of the U.S. Constitution is consistent with the requirements of HB2492.
The misguided lawsuits also attack HB2492’s requirement to include place of birth on the registration form, oblivious to the fact that it is currently on the Arizona voter registration form, which was created by Democrat Secretary of State Katie Hobbs. Also ignoring that it was actually the Election Assistance Commission who recommended obtaining place of birth to help verify citizenship status.
The reality is that these are flawed lawsuits against a commonsense bill. Instead of wasting time and taxpayer dollars in court, the Biden administration should actually be securing our border, protecting states like ours from an invasion of illegal immigrants. Instead, they are trying to stop necessary election reforms that make it easy to vote and hard to cheat and protect our elections from the hundreds of thousands of people illegally crossing into our country each day under their watch.
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