The Republican National Committee is urging the Supreme Court to intervene in an Arizona election dispute this week and block up to 40,000 of the state’s registered voters from casting ballots in the presidential race.
Republican state lawmakers say these voters did not provide proof of their citizenship when they were registered and now they should be barred from from voting in person or by mail.
…
Danielle Lang, a voting rights attorney for the Campaign Legal Center who worked on the case, said she found that argument to be surprising.
“They are trying to upend the law as it has been in Arizona at least since 2018,” she said. “The voters who registered using the federal form were not asked to provide proof of citizenship.”
She said the Republican lawmakers and their attorneys who brought the case “didn’t cite a single example of a noncitizen who was enrolled. Not one. Why would someone who is not a citizen try to register? It’s a felony and would get you deported, just to cast one ballot.”
This strategy of challenging and removing voters in communities that are largely oppositional isn’t unique to the Republican Party, but it is a favorite of theirs. And the argument always boils down to claims of “illegal voting” to swing the election, which they then leverage into claims that any Democrat advantage on voting day was won fraudulently.