Federal appeals court hears arguments in AZ voting law case

After hearing arguments by Republican attorneys and lawyers for voting rights groups, a federal appeals court panel will decide whether two voting laws passed by Republican legislators in 2022 should be allowed to take effect.

The arguments before three judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals took place seven months after federal district court Judge Susan Bolton partially blocked those laws but upheld provisions that would require counties to verify the status of registered voters who haven’t provided proof of U.S. citizenship and cross-check voter registration information with various government databases.

In an earlier ruling, Bolton blocked a requirement that people who use a federal voter registration form provide additional proof of citizenship if they want to vote for president or use the state’s vote-by-mail system.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay in August allowing the state, for now, to reject voter registrations on the state form that don’t include proof of citizenship.

Attorneys for both sides agreed that, no matter what the 9th Circuit decides, that provision will be the only part of the law in place during the November election this year.

The Supreme Court stay did not allow other blocked provisions of the law to take effect, including requirements that people who use a federal voter registration form provide additional proof of citizenship if they want to vote for president or use the state’s vote-by-mail system.

The organizations challenging the case argue the laws are discriminatory against certain racial groups, an argument Bolton rejected.

solutions searching for an exceedingly rare problem — that is, non-citizens voting in Arizona elections.

“So there is, you know, all this evidence on the front end that we have a system that's working well and is well calibrated,” said Danielle Lang, an attorney representing plaintiffs in the case. “All the election officials saying we don't need this, and, in fact, this is going to muck up our system and make it very difficult to administer. And we have no evidence on the other side.”

Langhofer rejected that claim, arguing the laws include safeguards to notify a person if they are identified as a non-citizen and dispute it.

“I candidly don't know what you could do more than that,” he said. “You confirm it in your records, you contact them, you make it free for them to respond. You say, ‘please respond. You've got 35 days.’ That's a long time. I don't know what else can be done.”

He argued the provision that would require proof of citizenship to vote by mail, for instance, includes safeguards to ensure voters aren’t incorrectly blocked. And, if they do not respond to that notification, they would have to vote in person under the law.

But Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw pointed out that, if the court upholds all aspects of the law, individual registering using the federal form without proof of citizenship would also be blocked from voting for president.

“Is that the whole ballgame here?” Wardlaw said.

Langhofer noted that would only go into effect in time for the next presidential election in 2028 if the appeals court, or the U.S. Supreme Court, overturns Bolton’s ruling.

“From where I sit, that’s not the ballgame at all,” Langhofer said. “We’re fighting about state elections.