Chalk up two more wins, or at least 1 1/2, for voting integrity. Last month in both Arizona and Nevada, plaintiffs won decisions forcing states to tighten procedures against possible vote fraud.
The more prominent case was from Arizona, where the Supreme Court gave a significant victory, even if one that was only both partial and interim, to the avatars of honest elections. At issue is whether states, at least for purposes of state (rather than federal) elected offices, can require proof of citizenship for anyone to register to vote. This means, more broadly, whether states can impose tighter requirements for voting integrity than federal law requires, assuming there are no invidiously discriminatory effects.
At least for purposes of the 2024 election, the Supreme Court said Arizona can indeed require proof of citizenship if the person at issue registers using a state-issued registration form rather than a federal one. The full merits of the case, Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota, remain to be adjudicated in lower federal courts. But a 5-4 Supreme Court majority ruled that until full adjudication, at least part of Arizona’s law, as described above, can go into effect. And three of the justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch — would have allowed the entire Arizona law to take effect in the interim.
Most people surely would find it preposterous that states would be forbidden from ensuring that only citizens can vote. Alas, federal election statutes and bad court interpretations through the years have made it difficult for states to implement even such a basic safeguard. Last month’s ruling at least temporarily reserves for states at least some authority for voter integrity. Without such safeguards, a large swath of the public will continue to distrust the legitimacy of election results, undermining faith in the constitutional system itself.
Quin Hillyer
Meanwhile, last month also saw a voter-integrity win in Nevada. There, the national Public Interest Legal Foundation had unearthed massively widespread voter registration infractions. Statewide, elections officials had sent 95,556 ballots to “bad” or undeliverable addresses in the 2022 midterm elections, and PILF has found hundreds of addresses in Clark County alone registered not at actual residences but at “strip clubs, casinos, bars, vacant lots, gas stations, and fast-food restaurants.” Oh, and also tattoo parlors. This runs counter to state law (and to common sense), which requires people to register where they live, which obviously does not include gas stations or, of course, vacant lots.
As a result of a PILF lawsuit demanding that the Registrar of the state’s most populous jurisdiction, Clark County, investigate these commercial-address registrants and scrub improper ones from the voter rolls, Registrar Lorena Portillo on Friday agreed to begin doing voter-list maintenance as required. A similar PILF lawsuit remains pending in Washoe County, the state’s second most populous.
Considering that Nevada elections tend to be quite close, with the 2022 Senate race decided by fewer than 8,000 votes, and considering that the state automatically mails ballots to every active registered voter, it is obvious that widespread illegal registration could easily make the difference between candidates winning and losing. Forcing registrars to do their jobs will not just bolster voter confidence that the results are fair, but also help ensure that they are accurate.
If the political left would spend less time denying the truth that major voter irregularities exist and more time working to eliminate those irregularities, the public would not be so susceptible to suspecting foul play.