Protecting the Right to Vote: AzAN Challenges Arizona's Institutionalized Voting Barriers
“In a democracy suffrage is the most basic civil right, since its exercise is the chief means whereby other rights may be safe-guarded. To deny the right to vote where one is legally entitled to do so, is to do violence to the principles of freedom and equality.” -Judge Levi S. Udall, father of Congressman Morris Udall, quoting the Indian law scholar Felix Cohen in the 1948 decision granting Native Americans the right to vote.
97 year old retired school teacher Shirley Preiss and her son Joe Nemnich, a World War II veteran
Shirley Freeda Preiss is Barred From Voting in Arizona After Voting in 19 Presidential Elections
Meet 97-year-old retired school teacher Shirley Freeda Preiss. She is pictured here holding a copy of the U.S. Constitution with her son, retired industrial engineer and World War II Vet Joe Nemnich. Shirley was born in Clinton, Kentucky in 1910 and never had a birth certificate. She never traveled outside of the U.S. so she never needed a passport. But lacking a birth certificate or any of the other documents required by the state of Arizona to prove citizenship, she is barred from registering to vote. She has voted in every presidential election since FDR first ran in 1932 and she was determined to vote in this one. But it is unlikely that she will be able to.
Arizona's Shame: A Long History of Denying Citizens the Right to Vote
When Native American soldiers returned home to Arizona after World War II, they learned that although their country gladly accepted their service, they were still barred from voting. It wasn't until 1948 that the Arizona Supreme Court overturned prior court rulings and the right to vote was extended to Native Americans. (Read more about this at the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona's website.) However, literacy tests and other barriers continued to bar most Indians from voting for another 17 years. During the fifties and sixties, voter intimidation and deception tactics were used to suppress Latino votes as well.
Like Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia and a few other states, Arizona's shameful record for voter suppression earned our state special consideration in the National Voting Rights Act of 1965. Any change to voting laws and procedures must be pre-cleared by the US Department of Justice to ensure that the proposed change does not have the purpose and will not have the effect of discriminating based on race or color.
Frustrated with the inability of the Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform, Arizonans passed a sweeping anti-immigrant ballot initiative in November of 2004. The measure was sold to voters as a way to stop undocumented immigrants from taking advantage of taxpayer-funded state benefits.Backers of the "Arizona Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act," commonly known as "Prop 200," also claimed that undocumented immigrants were risking their lives crossing Arizona's harsh deserts so that they could vote illegally in our elections.
There is no evidence that the crime of Voter Fraud exists. (Remember the 2004 gubernatorial race in the state of Washington that was decided by 129 votes out of more than 2.6 million?Every ballot was counted and re-counted under the watchful eyes of representatives from each candidate, who were ready to disqualify any questionable ballot.There were two or three cases of people voting twice. No voter fraud was found.) In the case of undocumented immigrants, it defies common sense.Setting aside the ridiculous notion that undocumented immigrants care so much about voting in American elections that they will risk everything to do so, people in the country without legal papers do not want to be discovered.They avoid government agencies.Yet Prop 200 included the most restrictive voting barriers since the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Arizonans Must Present Documentary Proof-of-Citizenship to Register to Vote. Prior to passage of Prop 200, an Arizona citizen could register to vote by affirming with her/his signature, under penalty of perjury, that she/he was indeed a United States citizen.Now, anyone wishing to register to vote in Arizona must present documentary proof-of-citizenship.Arizonans moving from one county to another within the state must present documentary proof-of-citizenship.Those registered to vote at the time the law was passed were grandfathered in—they did not need to re-register with proof-of-citizenship. The following documents are acceptable to the state of Arizona to prove citizenship:
State-certified birth certificate showing correct name; a marriage certificate may also be necessary.Registrations have been denied because the applicants presented hospital-issued birth certificates.Obtaining a state-certified birth certificate can take months.
Valid Arizona Driver’s License or Non-Operating ID issued after October 1, 1996
Current U.S. Passport
Certificate of Naturalization
Tribal identification, Bureau of Indian Affairs card number, tribal treaty card number or tribal enrollment number
Collateral Damage: For many elderly, disabled, low-income citizens, and/or young people the cost and burden of obtaining these documents is prohibitive.They are barred from voting in Arizona. The cost of obtaining these documents ranges from $10 to more than $100.(Poll taxes of any sort were banned with the ratification of the 24th amendment in 1964, but the courts have decided that these financial barriers to voting do not qualify as poll taxes.) For people living on fixed incomes, even $1 is too much to pay.Many do not possess the documents necessary to obtain these documents.They will not be able to register to vote in Arizona.You can meet some of these people by clicking here. Arizonans Must Present Identification in Order to Vote at the Polls. Prior to passage of Prop 200, pollworkers would locate a voter’s name on the rolls and the voter would sign the book, thereby ensuring that no other person could impersonate that voter at the polls.Now anyone voting at the polls must produce proof-of-identity.Here is a quintessential solution in search of a problem.There have been no cases of voter impersonation ever prosecuted in Arizona.The options for ID at the polls include:
One government issued photo-identification showing voter’s correct name and address.(Passports may not be used because they do not show the voter’s address.) OR
Two pieces of non-photo ID showing the voter’s correct name and address.Acceptable documents include:
Bank statements dated within the past 90 days
Utility bills dated within the past 90 days.(Remember, these must have the voter’s name and address on them.Utility bills showing a spouse’s or room-mate’s name will not suffice.)
Vehicle insurance and/or registration cards
Property tax statement
Any piece of mail sent from the County Recorder’s office to the voter by name.(These may include sample ballots, polling place notification cards, voter registration cards.)
Tribal ID
Once again, the elderly, disabled, low-income citizens and young people are far less likely to have any of these items. Interestingly those that use Arizona’s vote-by-mail option are not required to present proof-of-identity.For these voters, the tried-and-true signature comparison is considered adequate proof-of-identity. Disparate Impact on People of Color Studies show that Anglos vote by mail at rates of 55 percent or greater.For Latinos, the rate drops to 15 percent, and it’s even lower for Native Americans.There is no question that Arizona's ID-at-the-polls requirement has a disparate, adverse impact on people of color.
A TIMELINE FROM PASSAGE OF PROP 200 THROUGH OUR COURT CHALLENGE:
November 2004: Arizona voters pass sweeping anti-immigrant measure known as Prop 200 requiring documentary proof-of-citizenship in order to register to vote and proof-of-identity for those voting at the polls. The voter registration requirements are the most restrictive in the country.
January 2005: Law goes into effect
Fall 2005: Original case challenging all provisions of Prop 200 fails when court determines plaintiffs lack standing
October 2005: Political appointees at the US Dept. of Justice pre-clear AZ Secretary of State Brewer's plan for implementing ID at the polls despite objections from career attorneys
December 2005: Arizona Advocacy Network convenes initial coalition to discuss filing a challenge to Prop 200's voting barriers January through April 2006: Coalition expands to include Inter-Tribal Council of Arizona, the League of Women Voters of Arizona, State Representative Steve Gallardo, League of United Latin American Citizens, the Hopi Tribe, and the People for the American Way Foundation with legal representation coordinated by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and including Osborn Maledon, Steptoe and Johnson LLP, Joe Sparks, the ACLU Foundation of Arizona, AARP Foundation, and attorneys for the People for the American Way Foundation.
March & May 2006: AzAN volunteers survey voters at polling places during municipal elections
July through September 2006: Thanks to a generous grant from the JEHT Foundation, AzAN canvasses on the Hopi Reservation, in senior citizen homes, and in low-income neighborhoods identifying individuals that cannot register to vote because they lack the necessary documents to prove citizenship.
August 2006: Eva Steele, a disabled woman living on a fixed income asks to join the lawsuit because she cannot register to vote in her newly adopted home state of Arizona. Ms. Steele is the mother of a soldier fighting in Iraq so that the Iraqi people can vote in their own democracy. She was scheduled to testify before the US House Committee on Administration but was cut from the witness list after her draft testimony was reviewed by Committee leadership, which supports Arizona's voting barriers. Read her testimony here.
September 2006: AzAN volunteers document numerous cases of voters wrongly being turned away at the polls because pollworkers claimed the voters had not produced sufficient ID
October 2006: Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals grants our request for preliminary injunction barring Prop 200's voting barriers through November 2006 election.
October 2006: US Supreme Court reverses Ninth Circuit; Prop 200's voting barriers are restored. AzAN petitions the district court to allow our non-partisan observers inside polling places. Court denies our requests and instructs the defendants--county recorders' offices--to gather evidence for the plaintiffs by documenting each case of voters being denied the right to vote due to ID problems.
November 2006: AzAN recruits, trains and deploys more than 100 volunteers to document disenfranchisement in November '06 election due to Voter ID requirements. AzAN's volunteers document hundreds of instances of voters being turned away from polling places. Later, defendants submit report to the courts showing zero problems at these same polling places.
August 2007: AzAN's 40+ volunteers begin contacting the more than 30,000 people whose voter registration applications have been rejected due to inadequate proof-of-citizenship. Using heavily redacted copies of the rejected forms, AzAN is able to call hundreds of would be voter helping dozens register to vote. Our efforts were shut down after the court agreed with attorneys for the county recorders that we were placing these would-be registrants in danger of identity theft.
Fall 2007: District Court judge decides to wait until the Indiana Voter ID case is decided by the United States Supreme Court before scheduling a hearing on the merits of our case.
April 2008: U.S. Supreme Court upholds Indiana's Voter ID law in a six to three decision. Door is still open for other challenges that produce significant numbers of individuals adversely affected by requirements that voters produce ID in order to vote at the polls.
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