There is a new legal challenge to freshly imposed requirements for proof of residency when registering to vote in Arizona.
In short, the new rules demand a proof of a physical street address when registering to vote in the state, but many residents in Indigenous communities don’t have the same sort of street address as those living elsewhere, and concurrently, they don’t have documentation of the location of their residence on their identifying documents.
It’s not the first time that a GOP push for new restrictions around elections has threatened to disproportionately impact Indigenous communities. In Montana, state officials imposed a ban on paid individuals gathering absentee ballots to return the votes to local authorities, but there isn’t comprehensive mail service in certain locales featuring an Indigenous community. Thus, if someone living there is essentially homebound and doesn’t have a family member or caregiver available for returning their ballot, they literally would not be able to participate in the balloting process under the rules without mail service that goes to their home. In September, the new regulations restricting paid ballot collection were struck down in Montana court alongside other changes to the state’s election rules that were also challenged, including one that eliminated the option of registering to vote on Election
Day.
It remains relevant to note that no recent evidence of any kind of systematic election fraud in the U.S. electoral process has ever emerged, and the numerous changes to the process of conducting elections that Republican officials in multiple states have pushed and implemented in the time since the 2020 presidential contest as such don’t really respond to anything substantive. Generally speaking, it’s all theoretical. Nobody discovered an epidemic of paid ballot collectors perpetrating fraudulent activity, and there has been no revelation of people registering to vote without appropriately established street addresses who shouldn’t be legally eligible to cast ballots.
The new Arizona lawsuit is from the Tohono O’odham Nation and Gila River Indian Community, as summarized by the voting rights organization Democracy Docket, and the case targets officials at both the state and county levels. The change in rules for voter registration covers Arizonans attempting to participate in federal elections. A case already arrived at the U.S. Supreme Court in which Republican state legislators in North Carolina are challenging the entirety of state judicial oversight over these officials’ handling of federal elections, and the outcome of that case, including whether it’s eventually decided in favor of the plaintiffs, could have significant ramifications across the country, including in a swing state like Arizona where control of state government could shift.
“These Community members, which include individuals who will become eligible to register to vote after January 1, 2023, typically do not have any documents that include both their name and an indicator of the physical location of their home sufficient to satisfy the Physical Address requirement under HB 2492,” the new case says, in a portion highlighted by Democracy Docket. “For these Tribal members, documents that typically might include such an address if they did have one—for example a lease, utility bill, bank statement, or vehicle registration—instead typically contain the family’s P.O. Box number, are in the name of another household member, or both. These documents thus do not satisfy the Physical Address requirement under HB 2492.” The lawsuit was filed in federal court and argues violations of federal law including the National Voter Registration Act.
