The Republican National Committee is urging the Supreme Court to intervene in an Arizona election dispute this week and block up to 40,000 of the state’s registered voters from casting ballots in the presidential race.
Republican state lawmakers say these voters did not provide proof of their citizenship when they were registered and now they should be barred from from voting in person or by mail.
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Danielle Lang, a voting rights attorney for the Campaign Legal Center who worked on the case, said she found that argument to be surprising.
“They are trying to upend the law as it has been in Arizona at least since 2018,” she said. “The voters who registered using the federal form were not asked to provide proof of citizenship.”
She said the Republican lawmakers and their attorneys who brought the case “didn’t cite a single example of a noncitizen who was enrolled. Not one. Why would someone who is not a citizen try to register? It’s a felony and would get you deported, just to cast one ballot.”
That’s more likely a function of your age and voting district than your registration. This kind of disenfranchisement is just a numbers game, so if you’re living in Houston’s Third Ward or you are trying to vote from the UT 40 Acres in Austin as a registered Republican you still run the risk of being purged or having your registration “lost”, because you’re in a community that’s overwhelmingly liberal-leaning.
By contrast, if you’re out in The Woodlands or Beaumont or Midland, you’ll have local Republicans actively encouraging you to register. One of the savvier moves Abbott did after the nail-biter Senate race in 2018 was to get a bunch of organizers and registrars out to South and West Texas gun shows, signing up anyone with a passing interest in firearms. 2020 and 2022 have been much more favorable to Republicans, as a result.