The Obama administration’s insistence that all states must use the same federal voter registration form effectively forbids any state from verifying – or even asking about – the citizenship status of would-be voters.
Details of a pending Supreme Court case, Kobach, et al. v. The United States Election Assistance Commission, reveal that the Obama administration considers states to be in violation of the law if they ask any information of registrants beyond what’s included on the federal form.
An amicus brief submitted April 21 by the American Civil Rights Union argues that the federal form serves as a gateway for non-citizens to register to vote, especially since the federal government doesn’t want the states supplementing the form with additional questions about registrants’ legal status.
Kansas and Arizona, while using the federal form, attempted to adopt some changes that would give those states a better understanding of the kind of people they were registering. The feds didn’t like that.
From the amicus brief:
Kansas’s and Arizona’s requested modifications to their state-specific instructions that implemented qualifications found in state law establishing who may vote in their elections. Only those applicants who present the necessary documentary proof of citizenship along with the Federal Form are registered and qualified to vote. Proof of citizenship is thus, by definition, a “qualification” for voting. Those who cannot establish they are citizens are not qualified to vote.The “EAC” is the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and its mission is exactly that described in the quote above. But it’s been a great tool for the Obama administration, which has sought new limits on states’ ability to qualify voters.
The States, not Congress (and certainly not the Acting Executive Director of EAC), have the sole authority to establish voter qualifications, including the power to ensure that the franchise is exercised only by citizens. [An earlier lower court’s] decision effectively reads that traditional state power out of the Constitution and hands it to an employee at the EAC, a small, federal commission that was designed primarily to assist the States in producing voter registration forms. This Court should grant the Petition in order to restore power to the States to set qualifications of voters as intended by the Framers.
“Federal law says that states must accept and use a federal form for registering voters. But the federal form doesn’t require any proof that the person submitting the form is a citizen,” PJ Media’s Joseph Vanderhulst – himself an immigrant – wrote in an April 30 piece.
“The form just asks the registrant to check a box.
“…Noncitizens are offered the voter registration forms all over the country and are filling them out, and they are being added to the rolls regardless of which box they check.”
In other words, the Obama policy is exacerbating the very problem the states are attempting, through the verification process, to solve.
