Arizona GOP Only Cares About Proof of Citizenship for Democrats

When it was revealed earlier this week that a data error in Arizona’s elections system cast the eligibility of nearly 98,000 registered voters into question, it put Gina Swoboda, the chair of the state’s Republican Party, into an awkward position. 

After years of defending the state’s restrictive documentary proof of citizenship requirement — meaning any Arizona resident who wishes to register to vote in state and local elections must show proof of their U.S. citizenship — she’s now taking the position that, actually, it’s not necessary for people to provide their proof of citizenship to vote. 

“It is my position as the chair of the Republican party of Arizona that these 98,000 people should not be stripped of their right to vote in the legislative races, or in the county races, or in the local races, or in the school board races, or on any of the propositions on our ballot, all of which are very important because they affect the lives of everyone in the state of Arizona,” Swoboda said in a recent video, posted on X. 

The reaction was not just for social media: that’s the official position the Arizona GOP took with the state’s Supreme Court, in an amicus brief filed on Wednesday, to persuade the court to let the affected voters cast a full ballot in the November election. “The governmental failure to enforce state law regarding proof of citizenship must be corrected — but not on the eve of an election where doing so may cause massive voter disenfranchisement and would be unlawful.”

Swoboda’s comments, and the position the Arizona GOP took in its amicus brief, isn’t just an about-face on past comments about Arizona’s documentary proof of citizenship law — it’s a complete contradiction to their past legal arguments on the complicated statute.

Under a 2004 Arizona law, residents are required to provide documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in all elections — federal, state and local. But those voters who didn’t provide proof of citizenship are registered as a “federal-only voter” and can only vote in presidential and federal elections. That same law states that any driver’s license issued after 1996 can be used as a valid proof of citizenship for registering to vote.

But, as Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer (R) recently discovered, a data error in Arizona’s Motor Vehicle Department (MVD) database and the statewide voter registration database erroneously marked close to 98,000 registered voters as having provided proof of citizenship, because they obtained their license before 1996. When those voters had a duplicate license issued as a replacement for their original, the system marked them as having provided proof of citizenship when they registered to vote, when in reality, it’s unclear if they did. 

And so Richer filed a lawsuit in the Arizona Supreme Court, asking the court to make those affected voters ineligible to vote in state and local races until they can provide documentary proof of citizenship. In response, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) asked the court to allow the affected voters to vote in all of the state’s races, since it’s so close to the election. 

So why is the state’s GOP suddenly siding with Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state in calling for the court to allow tens of thousands of voters who did not provide proof of citizenship to cast their ballot anyway?

It comes down to the partisan breakdown of the affected voters — which includes 36,539 Republicans, 26,878 Democrats and the rest are part of other parties or have  no designated party. In a press conference on Tuesday, Fontes said that a majority of those voters are registered as Republicans. And, as Arizona Central noted, GOP control of the state’s Legislature is at stake in November — meaning that, if the Arizona Supreme Court rules that the affected voters can’t cast their ballots in state and local elections in November, it could cost them control of the Arizona House of Representatives and Senate. 

About that awkward position Swoboda is now in: In previous lawsuits, the Arizona GOP has explicitly argued in favor of strictly enforcing the state’s documentary proof of citizenship law, no matter the circumstances. In a 2022 lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Arizona’s proof of citizenship laws, for example, Arizona republicans argued that “requiring documentary proof of citizenship and residency on the state form does not unduly burden the right to vote.”

In their most recent brief, the Arizona GOP argued that the National Voting Registration Act (NRVA) prohibits voter list maintenance within 90 days of a general election for federal office — and thus the affected voters should vote on the full ballots they’re scheduled to receive. But in the 2022 citizenship requirement challenge lawsuit, they also argued that “Arizona’s list maintenance for citizenship status does not violate the NVRA’s 90-day blackout period.”

And so, for Swoboda and the Arizona GOP — who’ve spent years defending the state’s documentary proof of citizenship law, falsely claiming in court and over social media that it helps prevent noncitizens from voting in elections — they are, for the first time, fighting against the restrictive law that has impacted Arizona voters.

Learn more about the case here.