Credit: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
by Jamelle Bouie
September 21, 2024
New York Times
In the first draft of my Wednesday column, I had a riff toward the end comparing the Trump campaign’s anti-Haitian rhetoric — and the extent to which it may have inspired bomb threats targeting the Haitian community of Springfield, Ohio — to the agitation and demagoguery of segregationist politicians in the Jim Crow South. As I refined the piece, I realized that the comparison, while apt, didn’t quite belong in the column. It detracted from the main thrust of the argument and may have done more to confuse than illuminate.
Even so, I think it’s a good observation! So rather than trash it, I thought I would share it as a special feature of sorts — the kind of thing you would find in the extras section of a DVD release. (This also gives you a glimpse into how I conceptualize this newsletter.)
Preceding this paragraph, in the original draft, I had argued that Trump and Vance were at risk of inciting people to take matters into their own hands with those they claimed were “illegal aliens.” This is more or less what followed:
It is not as if the United States lacks experience with this exact dynamic. Under Jim Crow, it was commonplace for elected officials — from lowly sheriffs to members of the United States Senate — to use their platforms in exactly the manner we see from Donald Trump and especially JD Vance. “When once the flat-nosed Ethiopian, like the camel, gets his proboscis under the tent,” Theodore Bilbo, the Mississippi senator and virulent segregationist, said, “he will overthrow the established order of our Saxon civilization.” Eugene Talmadge, who served as governor of Georgia throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s, ran a 1946 re-election campaign so virulently racist that it sparked deadly violence against Black residents. When, in 1962, federal marshals were preparing to escort James Meredith to the University of Mississippi, thus integrating the all-white school, Gov. Ross Barnett told a nearby crowd that Ole Miss was “ready to be invaded.” His call to arms produced a mob that flooded the campus, leaving two people dead.
There are other examples I left out. Late-era Jim Crow figures like Lester Maddox and Orval Faubus were as quick to reach for incendiary rhetoric as Trump is. And George Wallace, obviously, is the model for much of the agitation and demagoguery that marks the approach of both Trump and Vance.
It is tempting to treat this rhetoric as a genuine expression of prejudice or atavistic rage. But I think it is more useful — not to mention closer to the truth — to see it as something more strategic. Jim Crow was an economic order as well as a political one. The purpose of segregation was as much to fracture and weaken Southern labor as it was to institutionalize race hierarchy and reify imagined differences between peoples. The same Jim Crow political elites that screamed about the “the flat-nosed Ethiopian” until voters stomped the floor used the power they won to sell their states to the highest bidder. They shaped their economies around the needs of industry, providing a low-wage, very low-regulation alternative to the unionized economies north of the Mason-Dixon line. Jim Crow was not free. The South paid for its negrophobia with endemic poverty so deep and shocking that we can still feel its effects in the present day.
So it goes with the Trump-Vance campaign against immigrants. To their crowds, they scream “illegals” and promise a cruel scheme of mass deportation. To their billionaire donors, they say “tax cuts” and promise a federal government devoted to the upward distribution of wealth and the destruction of the social insurance state. They call it “conservative populism,” but it is drawing from the same playbook that kept the South mired in poverty: You sell the people hate so that you can give capital — the actual ruling class — as much of the pie as it can shovel into its face.
What I Wrote
My Wednesday column was on the similarities between what happened in Charlottesville, Va., and what the Trump campaign is doing to Springfield, Ohio.
Trump did not have a successful presidency. He failed to manage the pandemic. His permissive attitude toward authoritarian regimes emboldened figures like Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban. His appointments to the federal judiciary left the basic rights of millions of people in shambles. His contempt for ordinary decency coarsened and corroded American civic life. He left both the nation and the world in worse shape. But for all of his failures as chief executive, Trump was an able rabble-rouser. He has a genuine talent for exploiting the worst passions of ordinary people. And Vance, his junior partner in that regard, appears to be a quick study.
My Friday column was on Trump’s chutzpah in denouncing extreme rhetoric.
The classic example of chutzpah is that of the child who murders his parents and then pleads for mercy as an orphan. With the 2024 presidential election, we have a new way to illustrate the point: the candidate who condones violence, dehumanizes his opponents and whips his supporters into a frenzy, then turns around to condemn the harsh rhetoric of his opponents and call for peaceful discourse.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va., and Washington. @jbouie
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/19/nx-s1-5114047/springfield-ohio-haitian-migrants-trump-safety-concerns
National
National
Bomb threats followed Trump's false claims about Springfield. Some Haitians may leave
Heard on Morning Edition
by Obed Manuel
September 19, 2024
NPR
4-Minute Listen
Download
Transcript
Heard on Morning Edition
by Obed Manuel
September 19, 2024
NPR
4-Minute Listen
Download
Transcript
The sun rises over the city of Springfield, Ohio, on Monday, Sept. 16, 2024. Jessie Wardarski/AP
Many in Springfield, Ohio have felt uneasy for the past week.
A string of bomb threats shut down city and school buildings. Public events have been canceled. And state troopers have been sent in to guard students going to school.
These developments follow former President Donald Trump repeating debunked claims on national TV about Haitian migrants eating pets. Local city and police officials have said there’s no evidence of this happening.
The false claims were originally circulated online by far-right activists, neo-Nazis and some local Republicans, though local police said they were baseless, NPR reported earlier this month. Eventually they were shared on social media by Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, and then repeated by the former president on the debate stage.
Members of the Haitian community, many of whom have arrived over the past four years, are concerned about their safety, Viles Dorsainvil, who lives there and leads the Haitian Community Help and Support Center, told Morning Edition.
“We are asking ourselves whether to stay here or go somewhere else,” Dorsainvil said.
Dorsainvil has lived in Springfield for four years. The nonprofit he leads, established less than a year ago, helps Haitian newcomers find housing and jobs. It also helps them with language services and getting public assistance, which some are eligible to receive under the Temporary Protected Status they hold.
2024 Election
Vance says Haitian migrants with protected status are 'illegal aliens' to be deported
This status shields them from deportation and grants them legal permission to work based on the unstable conditions in their home country.
How fear has permeated the Haitian community
Trump’s comments during his debate with Vice President Harris sent a shockwave among the estimated 15,000 to 20,000 migrants who now call Springfield home.
Members of the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio, from left, Lindsay Aime, James Fleurijean, Viles Dorsainvil, and Rose-Thamar Joseph, stand for worship at Central Christian Church, on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024. Jessie Wardarski/AP/AP
Families are afraid to go out or send their kids to school or go to church, Dorsainvil said. He added that some are afraid to call cars through rideshare apps because they don’t know who will pick them up or their intentions.
And some are considering giving up major financial investments they’ve made.
“There are some homeowners who want to sell back their homes just to leave,” Dorsainvil said. “I was asking them to give themselves some time to see if we can navigate this together by the fact [that] we have the solidarity of the city officials and the police department and the local leaders and the church leaders.”
Bomb threats and event cancellations have kept local leaders busy
At least 33 bomb threats were made to various buildings in the city between last Thursday and Monday, Gov. Mike DeWine said at a press conference this week, all of which were false.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) speaks at a press conference at Springfield City Hall alongside Ohio State Highway Patrol Colonel Charles Jones, left, Director of the Department of Public Safety Andy Wilson, second from right, and Springfield City School Superintendent Robert Hill, right, in Springfield, Ohio, Monday, Sept. 16, 2024. Patrick Aftoora-Orsagos/AP/AP
The threats began the morning of Sept. 12, forcing Springfield City Hall and several other buildings to be evacuated and closed, NPR member station WYSO reports.
Earlier this week, Springfield canceled its Downtown CultureFest, an event centered around celebrating the area’s diversity, that was scheduled for late September due to safety concerns. Wittenberg University also canceled all sporting events through this coming weekend and classes went fully remote.
On Tuesday, DeWine dispatched state troopers and bomb sniffing dogs to be stationed at schools and urged concerned parents to send their children to class after attendance dipped.
Governor worries city’s housing, medical needs are being overlooked
DeWine, a Republican, pushed back against Trump’s claims in a Sept. 12 interview with Morning Edition, saying that “there's a lot of crazy stuff up on the internet.”
DeWine said the focus should be on how the city is struggling to adapt to such rapid population growth after years of decline. The city of about 60,000 people has swelled with the thousands of Haitian arrivals, some of whom were encouraged by family and area employers to move to the area.
The new arrivals have helped fill jobs due to a labor shortage.
2024 Election
The stereotype of immigrants eating dogs and cats is storied — and vitriolic as ever
But it’s gotten harder for people in the town to get primary health care and find housing due to rising rents, DeWine said.
He added that many longtime residents are concerned about newcomers’ ability to drive safely. Last August, a Haitian migrant driving without a valid license crashed with a school bus, resulting in the death of 11-year-old Aiden Clark.
The driver was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Clark’s parents have explicitly asked Trump, Vance and other politicians to stop invoking their son’s name during political appearances.
Anecdotally, migrant drivers are experiencing a higher rate of crashes, according to an FAQ put out by the city of Springfield. In response, the city has launched driver training courses for the newcomers who are inexperienced drivers.
The head of the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles said migrant drivers go through the same process all Ohio residents do to get licenses, the Statehouse News Bureau of Ohio reported earlier this month.
Last week, before the presidential debate, DeWine announced new public safety and health support for the city, including dispatching Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers to the city and directing $2.5 million to expand healthcare access in the area and other supportive services.
“We just have to work our way through this problem. We would like some help from the federal government,” DeWine said.
Vance defended sharing the false rumors that put Springfield in the national spotlight during an interview with CNN Sunday.
"If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do," Vance said. On Wednesday, he said that Haitian migrants with TPS were granted that status unlawfully and that it would change under a second Trump administration.
Dorsainvil said he understands why locals and others are concerned about how the city will accommodate both newcomers and longtime residents and hopes to work toward solutions. But after the fear felt the past week, he just wants those spreading the debunked claims to stop.
“Stop dividing the country that all of us love,” Dorsainvil said. “We can do better. We can keep moving forward together with words of unity and encouragement.”
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/08/supreme-court-help-trump-close-election.html
Jurisprudence
Jurisprudence
The Supreme Court Just Signaled What It Will Do If the Election Is Close
by Norman L. Eisen and Jacob Kovacs-Goodman
August 29, 2024
SLATE
The legal warfare over the 2024 election is well underway. The MAGA shenanigans of the Georgia election board have overshadowed disturbing developments in Arizona. Last week, the Supreme Court signaled it would revisit an issue it had settled over a decade ago, allowing a new Arizona law to go into effect requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. Reopening the issue at the last minute and after registration has begun, the justices are fomenting a false public narrative that noncitizens are a threat to U.S. elections. This is the latest signal that the justices are in cahoots with former President Donald Trump and may be prepared to meddle in the election—unless it is decided by margins too large to tamper with.
The case is Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota, where the Republican National Committee requested eleventh-hour “emergency” changes to Arizona’s voter registration laws—even though the state’s vote-by-mail registration window has already begun. The lawsuit strikes at the heart of voting rights and fair elections: Not only does the RNC seek to prevent tens of thousands of eligible Arizonans from lawfully casting ballots, but they also advance the canard that noncitizens are voting in U.S. elections. As the libertarian Cato Institute noted: “there is no good evidence that noncitizens voted illegally in large enough numbers to actually shift the outcome of elections.” This high-court intervention is wrong, and the stakes could not be higher: Joe Biden won Arizona in 2020 by only 10,457 votes, and it’s unclear what impact the court’s new ruling could have in November.
The court’s unsigned order in the RNC case allows an Arizona law to go into effect requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. This strongly suggests that the conservative wing of the court, three of whom are Trump appointees, will ultimately strike down a portion of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, a crucial federal voting rights law—formerly championed by Justice Antonin Scalia—as unconstitutional when it ultimately hears the case.
While the court in this case granted the RNC’s request to enable a law that required documentary proof of citizenship for all new registrations, it refrained from granting another to strike the 42,301 voters who are already registered without documentation. However, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch would have done the latter as well.
And the threat is not over, since the court will have other potential opportunities to interfere with Arizona’s voter rolls. For instance, Trump policy architect Stephen Miller and his America First group filed a lawsuit in Maricopa County, just a few weeks ago, to compel the county recorder to engage in “list maintenance” by submitting the names of voters registered without documentation to the Department of Homeland Security and the state attorney general.
Although Miller’s lawsuit may (and hopefully will) go nowhere, the court’s election season intervention could tip the election even if the law applies only to prospective registrations. Voter registration is surging in the wake of President Joe Biden’s exit from the race, with nonpartisan registration group Vote.org reporting tens of thousands of new registrants across the nation, 83 percent of whom were under the age of 34, in just the first two days following Biden’s announcement. Although data from Arizona is not yet available, the trend continues in battleground states nationwide. With the registration period already well underway, the court’s new ruling means that information previously provided to aspiring voters to ensure their eligibility to vote is no longer accurate. This compounds Arizona’s preexisting registration pain points, where over 20,000 residents had their registrations put on hold back in the July primary—many due to inconsequential technical errors—well before this court decision.
How did we get here? In an era three decades ago when the right to vote enjoyed more bipartisan support, Congress passed the NVRA to standardize voter registration procedures across the country. To do so, it created a national registration application form, which requires applicants to swear under penalty of perjury to their status as U.S. citizens, but does not require voters to submit additional supporting documentation. Nonetheless, a decade later in 2004, Arizona enacted Proposition 200, which compelled voters to submit proof of citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, to register to vote.
The Supreme Court in 2013 said Arizona couldn’t do that. In a 7–2 decision, authored by Scalia and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court held that the federal NVRA preempts Arizona’s conflicting documentation requirements because “the power of Congress over the ‘Times, Places and Manner’ of congressional elections ‘is paramount, and may be exercised at any time, and to any extent which it deems expedient.’ ”
Arizona already requires proof of citizenship to vote in state elections, and almost all Arizona voters provide such proof. However, there are a few thousand “federal only” voters in Arizona who have not submitted additional documentation, many of whom register in precincts on college campuses (so they’re likely college students without drivers licenses, not noncitizens who are ineligible to vote).
Emboldened by a party climate that seeks to unravel constitutional norms and the rule of law, in 2022 Arizona Republicans passed a statute that sought—in clear conflict with the Supreme Court’s 2013 case—to reimpose the citizenship documentation requirement for federal elections. The Supreme Court had explained that the NVRA “precludes Arizona from requiring a Federal Form applicant to submit information beyond that required by the form itself.” In this age where precedent is no impediment to the court reaching its ideological aims, the RNC’s recent bid appears to have been successful: Under the court’s order last week, the new Arizona law requiring all new registrations to provide documented proof of citizenship will go into effect. And once it reviews the case fully, which we anticipate it will next year, it may well revisit the status of the 40,000-plus voters who have already been registered.
To add insult to injury, the court’s conservative wing has been dizzyingly hypocritical in reversing itself here. In the 2020 election, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Gorsuch invoked the so-called Purcell principle, which stands for the idea that federal courts should not interfere with state voting laws close to an election. The court’s last-minute changes to election rules here could make a difference in November. Not all voters without an ID vote Democratic, but many do. That includes college students who are away from their homes and, consequently, without the sort of documentation that Arizona’s new law requires. Among 18-to-29-year-old registered voters in battleground states, Harris leads Trump by 9 points.
The legal warfare over the 2024 election is well underway. The MAGA shenanigans of the Georgia election board have overshadowed disturbing developments in Arizona. Last week, the Supreme Court signaled it would revisit an issue it had settled over a decade ago, allowing a new Arizona law to go into effect requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. Reopening the issue at the last minute and after registration has begun, the justices are fomenting a false public narrative that noncitizens are a threat to U.S. elections. This is the latest signal that the justices are in cahoots with former President Donald Trump and may be prepared to meddle in the election—unless it is decided by margins too large to tamper with.
The case is Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota, where the Republican National Committee requested eleventh-hour “emergency” changes to Arizona’s voter registration laws—even though the state’s vote-by-mail registration window has already begun. The lawsuit strikes at the heart of voting rights and fair elections: Not only does the RNC seek to prevent tens of thousands of eligible Arizonans from lawfully casting ballots, but they also advance the canard that noncitizens are voting in U.S. elections. As the libertarian Cato Institute noted: “there is no good evidence that noncitizens voted illegally in large enough numbers to actually shift the outcome of elections.” This high-court intervention is wrong, and the stakes could not be higher: Joe Biden won Arizona in 2020 by only 10,457 votes, and it’s unclear what impact the court’s new ruling could have in November.
The court’s unsigned order in the RNC case allows an Arizona law to go into effect requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. This strongly suggests that the conservative wing of the court, three of whom are Trump appointees, will ultimately strike down a portion of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, a crucial federal voting rights law—formerly championed by Justice Antonin Scalia—as unconstitutional when it ultimately hears the case.
While the court in this case granted the RNC’s request to enable a law that required documentary proof of citizenship for all new registrations, it refrained from granting another to strike the 42,301 voters who are already registered without documentation. However, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch would have done the latter as well.
And the threat is not over, since the court will have other potential opportunities to interfere with Arizona’s voter rolls. For instance, Trump policy architect Stephen Miller and his America First group filed a lawsuit in Maricopa County, just a few weeks ago, to compel the county recorder to engage in “list maintenance” by submitting the names of voters registered without documentation to the Department of Homeland Security and the state attorney general.
Although Miller’s lawsuit may (and hopefully will) go nowhere, the court’s election season intervention could tip the election even if the law applies only to prospective registrations. Voter registration is surging in the wake of President Joe Biden’s exit from the race, with nonpartisan registration group Vote.org reporting tens of thousands of new registrants across the nation, 83 percent of whom were under the age of 34, in just the first two days following Biden’s announcement. Although data from Arizona is not yet available, the trend continues in battleground states nationwide. With the registration period already well underway, the court’s new ruling means that information previously provided to aspiring voters to ensure their eligibility to vote is no longer accurate. This compounds Arizona’s preexisting registration pain points, where over 20,000 residents had their registrations put on hold back in the July primary—many due to inconsequential technical errors—well before this court decision.
How did we get here? In an era three decades ago when the right to vote enjoyed more bipartisan support, Congress passed the NVRA to standardize voter registration procedures across the country. To do so, it created a national registration application form, which requires applicants to swear under penalty of perjury to their status as U.S. citizens, but does not require voters to submit additional supporting documentation. Nonetheless, a decade later in 2004, Arizona enacted Proposition 200, which compelled voters to submit proof of citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, to register to vote.
The Supreme Court in 2013 said Arizona couldn’t do that. In a 7–2 decision, authored by Scalia and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court held that the federal NVRA preempts Arizona’s conflicting documentation requirements because “the power of Congress over the ‘Times, Places and Manner’ of congressional elections ‘is paramount, and may be exercised at any time, and to any extent which it deems expedient.’ ”
Arizona already requires proof of citizenship to vote in state elections, and almost all Arizona voters provide such proof. However, there are a few thousand “federal only” voters in Arizona who have not submitted additional documentation, many of whom register in precincts on college campuses (so they’re likely college students without drivers licenses, not noncitizens who are ineligible to vote).
Emboldened by a party climate that seeks to unravel constitutional norms and the rule of law, in 2022 Arizona Republicans passed a statute that sought—in clear conflict with the Supreme Court’s 2013 case—to reimpose the citizenship documentation requirement for federal elections. The Supreme Court had explained that the NVRA “precludes Arizona from requiring a Federal Form applicant to submit information beyond that required by the form itself.” In this age where precedent is no impediment to the court reaching its ideological aims, the RNC’s recent bid appears to have been successful: Under the court’s order last week, the new Arizona law requiring all new registrations to provide documented proof of citizenship will go into effect. And once it reviews the case fully, which we anticipate it will next year, it may well revisit the status of the 40,000-plus voters who have already been registered.
To add insult to injury, the court’s conservative wing has been dizzyingly hypocritical in reversing itself here. In the 2020 election, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Gorsuch invoked the so-called Purcell principle, which stands for the idea that federal courts should not interfere with state voting laws close to an election. The court’s last-minute changes to election rules here could make a difference in November. Not all voters without an ID vote Democratic, but many do. That includes college students who are away from their homes and, consequently, without the sort of documentation that Arizona’s new law requires. Among 18-to-29-year-old registered voters in battleground states, Harris leads Trump by 9 points.
Beyond the age-old strategy of voter suppression, the RNC’s agenda in bringing this case so close to the election is undoubtedly meant to serve as a psychological operation to sow seeds of doubt in the presidential election by reviving the debunked conspiracy theory about outcome-determinative noncitizen voting. And they are not alone: 24 states wrote an amicus brief in support of Arizona alleging that “aliens are illegally voting in elections” in numbers sufficient to have won North Carolina for Obama in 2008. In support for these assertions, the states cite a single, deeply methodologically flawed and widely debunked study, whose author has long lamented his work being twisted in this way.
The legal warfare over the 2024 election is well underway. The MAGA shenanigans of the Georgia election board have overshadowed disturbing developments in Arizona. Last week, the Supreme Court signaled it would revisit an issue it had settled over a decade ago, allowing a new Arizona law to go into effect requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. Reopening the issue at the last minute and after registration has begun, the justices are fomenting a false public narrative that noncitizens are a threat to U.S. elections. This is the latest signal that the justices are in cahoots with former President Donald Trump and may be prepared to meddle in the election—unless it is decided by margins too large to tamper with.
The case is Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota, where the Republican National Committee requested eleventh-hour “emergency” changes to Arizona’s voter registration laws—even though the state’s vote-by-mail registration window has already begun. The lawsuit strikes at the heart of voting rights and fair elections: Not only does the RNC seek to prevent tens of thousands of eligible Arizonans from lawfully casting ballots, but they also advance the canard that noncitizens are voting in U.S. elections. As the libertarian Cato Institute noted: “there is no good evidence that noncitizens voted illegally in large enough numbers to actually shift the outcome of elections.” This high-court intervention is wrong, and the stakes could not be higher: Joe Biden won Arizona in 2020 by only 10,457 votes, and it’s unclear what impact the court’s new ruling could have in November.
The court’s unsigned order in the RNC case allows an Arizona law to go into effect requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. This strongly suggests that the conservative wing of the court, three of whom are Trump appointees, will ultimately strike down a portion of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, a crucial federal voting rights law—formerly championed by Justice Antonin Scalia—as unconstitutional when it ultimately hears the case.
While the court in this case granted the RNC’s request to enable a law that required documentary proof of citizenship for all new registrations, it refrained from granting another to strike the 42,301 voters who are already registered without documentation. However, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch would have done the latter as well.
And the threat is not over, since the court will have other potential opportunities to interfere with Arizona’s voter rolls. For instance, Trump policy architect Stephen Miller and his America First group filed a lawsuit in Maricopa County, just a few weeks ago, to compel the county recorder to engage in “list maintenance” by submitting the names of voters registered without documentation to the Department of Homeland Security and the state attorney general.
Although Miller’s lawsuit may (and hopefully will) go nowhere, the court’s election season intervention could tip the election even if the law applies only to prospective registrations. Voter registration is surging in the wake of President Joe Biden’s exit from the race, with nonpartisan registration group Vote.org reporting tens of thousands of new registrants across the nation, 83 percent of whom were under the age of 34, in just the first two days following Biden’s announcement. Although data from Arizona is not yet available, the trend continues in battleground states nationwide. With the registration period already well underway, the court’s new ruling means that information previously provided to aspiring voters to ensure their eligibility to vote is no longer accurate. This compounds Arizona’s preexisting registration pain points, where over 20,000 residents had their registrations put on hold back in the July primary—many due to inconsequential technical errors—well before this court decision.
Related From Slate:
Hila Keren
The Courts Are Already Starting to Implement Project 2025, Without Trump
Read More
How did we get here? In an era three decades ago when the right to vote enjoyed more bipartisan support, Congress passed the NVRA to standardize voter registration procedures across the country. To do so, it created a national registration application form, which requires applicants to swear under penalty of perjury to their status as U.S. citizens, but does not require voters to submit additional supporting documentation. Nonetheless, a decade later in 2004, Arizona enacted Proposition 200, which compelled voters to submit proof of citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, to register to vote.
The Supreme Court in 2013 said Arizona couldn’t do that. In a 7–2 decision, authored by Scalia and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court held that the federal NVRA preempts Arizona’s conflicting documentation requirements because “the power of Congress over the ‘Times, Places and Manner’ of congressional elections ‘is paramount, and may be exercised at any time, and to any extent which it deems expedient.’ ”
Arizona already requires proof of citizenship to vote in state elections, and almost all Arizona voters provide such proof. However, there are a few thousand “federal only” voters in Arizona who have not submitted additional documentation, many of whom register in precincts on college campuses (so they’re likely college students without drivers licenses, not noncitizens who are ineligible to vote).
Emboldened by a party climate that seeks to unravel constitutional norms and the rule of law, in 2022 Arizona Republicans passed a statute that sought—in clear conflict with the Supreme Court’s 2013 case—to reimpose the citizenship documentation requirement for federal elections. The Supreme Court had explained that the NVRA “precludes Arizona from requiring a Federal Form applicant to submit information beyond that required by the form itself.” In this age where precedent is no impediment to the court reaching its ideological aims, the RNC’s recent bid appears to have been successful: Under the court’s order last week, the new Arizona law requiring all new registrations to provide documented proof of citizenship will go into effect. And once it reviews the case fully, which we anticipate it will next year, it may well revisit the status of the 40,000-plus voters who have already been registered.
To add insult to injury, the court’s conservative wing has been dizzyingly hypocritical in reversing itself here. In the 2020 election, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Gorsuch invoked the so-called Purcell principle, which stands for the idea that federal courts should not interfere with state voting laws close to an election. The court’s last-minute changes to election rules here could make a difference in November. Not all voters without an ID vote Democratic, but many do. That includes college students who are away from their homes and, consequently, without the sort of documentation that Arizona’s new law requires. Among 18-to-29-year-old registered voters in battleground states, Harris leads Trump by 9 points.
Beyond the age-old strategy of voter suppression, the RNC’s agenda in bringing this case so close to the election is undoubtedly meant to serve as a psychological operation to sow seeds of doubt in the presidential election by reviving the debunked conspiracy theory about outcome-determinative noncitizen voting. And they are not alone: 24 states wrote an amicus brief in support of Arizona alleging that “aliens are illegally voting in elections” in numbers sufficient to have won North Carolina for Obama in 2008. In support for these assertions, the states cite a single, deeply methodologically flawed and widely debunked study, whose author has long lamented his work being twisted in this way.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Norman L. Eisen served as White House ethics czar and ambassador to the Czech Republic under President Barack Obama as well as as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee from 2019–20, including for the first impeachment and trial of President Donald Trump.
Jacob Kovacs-Goodman is an elections and technology lawyer.
