Lex Rex Attorney Takes Election-Integrity Fight to the Supreme Court

How can a State ensure that only citizens vote if it cannot ask for proof of citizenship—and cannot remove a registration after learning that the registrant is not a citizen?

     That is the question now before the U.S. Supreme Court in Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota. Today, Lex Rex Institute attorney Alexander Haberbush, together with constitutional scholar Dr. John Eastman, filed an amicus brief urging the Court to reverse the Ninth Circuit.

     Arizona's laws are straightforward. Only U.S. citizens may vote. Applicants who use Arizona's own registration form must provide documentary proof of citizenship. And when officials learn through official records that someone already on the rolls is not a citizen, state law provides a process for correcting the registration.

     The Ninth Circuit held that federal law bars Arizona from enforcing any of it.

     Our brief explains why that gets the Constitution backwards. The Framers gave Congress authority over the mechanics of federal elections, but deliberately reserved the qualifications of voters to the States—so that the federal government could never use its control over election procedures to decide who gets to choose its own members.

     That reservation means little if a State can be forbidden from gathering the evidence needed to determine whether an applicant actually meets the qualification it has set. A citizenship requirement the State is not allowed to verify is not much of a citizenship requirement at all.

     The same common-sense principle governs the voter rolls. When officials receive official confirmation that a registered voter is not a citizen, Arizona wants to correct its rolls. Federal law should not be read to require States to keep known noncitizens registered.

     The stakes reach well beyond Arizona. If the Ninth Circuit is right, every State that makes citizenship a qualification for voting can be blocked from taking ordinary steps to verify and enforce it.

     The Supreme Court now has the opportunity to reaffirm a basic principle of election administration: States that require voters to be citizens must have meaningful authority to make sure they are.

     The Lex Rex Institute is proud to have Alexander Haberbush make that case before the nation's highest court.

Read the amicus brief here.