Supreme Court ‘Produces Truly Strange Results’ in Arizona Decision

There is no end to the America-killing insanity coming from our enemy elites in Washington, and on Monday, the Supreme Court stupidly shot down a provision of Arizona’s voting law—which was approved by a 2004 referendum of the state’s residents—that required people to prove they are citizens of the United States when registering to vote by mail.

Chief Justice John “Obamacare Turncoat” Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy (who concurred in part and concurred in the judgment) joined the commie-left wing of the Court in the ruling. In part, the Court used Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution to “justify” the decision:

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of [choosing] Senators…

Can any rational person believe that when our Founding Fathers hammered out that passage, they in any way whatsoever intended it to mean that it is acceptable for Congress—or in this case the extra-congressional Election Assistance Commission—to prohibit states from requiring people to prove they are American citizens to register to vote? The idea is preposterous.

States retain the flexibility to design and use their own registration forms, but the Federal Form provides a backstop: No matter what procedural hurdles a state’s own form imposes, the Federal Form guarantees that a simple means of registering to vote in federal elections will be available.

Our right to vote is a precious one, but nowhere in the Constitution did our Founders say we must guarantee a “simple means of registering to vote,” after all, there was no “voter registration” at the founding of our nation. However, as it stood, Arizona’s law requiring proof of citizenship was not an undue or complex burden on the people. From the Court’s Opinion are listed the proof of citizenship documents accepted by Arizona for voter registration by mail:

(1) a photocopy of the applicant’s passport or birth certificate, (2) a driver’s license number, if the license states that the issuing authority verified the holder’s U. S. citizenship, (3) evidence of naturalization, (4) tribal identification, or (5) “[o]ther documents or methods of proof . . . established pursuant to the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.”

Which of us legal U.S. citizens could not easily provide one of those proofs? There is nothing wrong with Arizona’s law, and it is in harmony with the federal requirement that voters must be U.S. citizens, but this bad Supreme Court ruling is simply another step in the dismantling of our formerly free Republic, paving the way for the cementing of the Third World invasion. Oh, yeah, let’s just trust people to “swear” they are U.S. citizens—no way should Arizona be allowed to make them prove it! Idiocy!

This is coming at the same time the amnesty wickedness is being steamrolled through the Senate, with a number of Republicans, including the despicable Marco Rubio (who we once gullibly liked), ignorantly supporting it, to the outrage of the majority of legal American citizens.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito were the two voices of reason, each writing a true and proper dissent to the putrid Opinion. Justice Thomas writes:

Congress has no role in setting voter qualifications, or determining whether they are satisfied, aside from the powers conferred by the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-Fourth, and Twenty-Sixth Amendments, which are not at issue here. This power is instead expressly reposed in the States.

The history of the Voter Qualifications Clause’s [Article 1, Section 2, clause 1] enactment confirms this conclusion. The Framers did not intend to leave voter qualifications to Congress. Indeed, James Madison explicitly rejected that possibility:

“The definition of the right of suffrage is very justly regarded as a fundamental article of republican government. It was incumbent on the convention, therefore, to define and establish this right in the Constitution. To have left it open for the occasional regulation of the Congress would have been improper.” The Federalist No. 52, at 323 (emphasis added).

Congressional legislation of voter qualifications was not part of the Framers’ design.

Arizona sets citizenship as a qualification to vote, and it wishes to verify citizenship, as it is authorized to do under Article 1, §2. It matters not whether the United States has specified one way in which it believes Arizona might be able to verify citizenship; Arizona has the independent constitutional authority to verify citizenship in the way it deems necessary.

… By requiring Arizona to register people who have not demonstrated to Arizona’s satisfaction that they meet its citizenship qualification for voting, the NVRA, as interpreted by the Court, would exceed Congress’ powers under Article I, §4, and violate Article 1, §2.

The Court reads an ambiguous federal statute in a way that brushes aside the constitutional authority of the States and produces truly strange results.

Under the Constitution, the States, not Congress, have the authority to establish the qualifications of voters in elections for Members of Congress. See Art. I, §2, cl. 1 (House); Amdt. 17 (Senate). The States also have the default authority to regulate federal voter registration. See Art. I, §4, cl. 1. Exercising its right to set federal voter qualifications, Arizona, like every other State, permits only U. S. citizens to vote in federal elections, and Arizona has concluded that this requirement cannot be effectively enforced unless applicants for registration are required to provide proof of citizenship. According to the Court, however, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) deprives Arizona of this authority. I do not think that this is what Congress intended.

It’s sickening that only two justices got this one right. We’re in scary times here in America, and they’re getting scarier by the minute. Those of us who are truly watching can easily see that our nation has been taken over by evil people who are systematically undoing the foundation of our country. But, it’s not like Barack Obama (or whatever his name is) didn’t warn us that he was set to fundamentally transform the United States of America; it’s just that too few of us knew what a breathtakingly diabolical statement that was and that he did indeed mean it. In fact, it’s one of the very few truthful things Obama has ever said to us.

J. Christian Adams

The only point that matters in relation to the federal form are the procedures that Scalia greenlighted today even if someone submits the federal form. You simply must understand the history of this fight to understand how significant this is.

In the past, the left has argued that once the federal form is completed and submitted, there is nothing a election official can do. As a result, election officials all over the nation have been beaten into submission by the lefty groups regarding the federal forms. They do no checking whatsoever because the left has argued such checks would be preempted by federal law.

Scalia today rejected that squarely and greenlighted extra checks. This means that Secretary of State Kobach in Kansas, for example, can continue to use federal noncitizen databases to check those federal form applicants. That means other double checks, like jury excusals can be used to block an improper federal form applicant. This is devastating to the ACORN style voter drives because the federal form was (before the opinion) seen as a no questions asked way to fill up the rolls with registrants, sometimes invalid ones. There are other great things in the opinion which I didn't even address in the article because the EAC is a zombie agency right now. But conservatives up in arms about this opinion are displaying an unfortunate lack of understanding of the wider field of battle and focused on the enemy breakthrough in the Arizona sector.

The constitution is really pretty vague when it comes to the qualifications for voters. And what little it says about voting indicates that congress can pass laws that define it, if congress wants.

The majority simply ruled that congress had done that, and the states could not simply ignore the federal law.

The majority opinion doesn’t even say that states can’t require proof — it just says they can’t do it by simply passing a law saying so. The opinion gives two possibilities, one is to just ask the feds to include proof in the form, the other is to then sue for the requirement to be added.

It is clear someone was confused, I guess it could be Scalia, although I rarely find him confused. Or you could realise that nobody has to be confused in order to disagree on how to interpret something like this in the constitution; Thomas tends to come down one way on these matters, Scalia on the other side. Alito goes back and forth.

Alito and Thomas took different approaches, and the biggest confusion in the article is how the article conflates those two.

Then they can be arrested for a felony, which under current law should get them deported.

I doubt the people who oppose this ruling would be glum if the state had passed a law allowing people to register without signing anything, and the court had ruled they had to use at a minimum the federal form.

I believe the federal government has a constitutional right to pass laws that define a federal standard for legal voting, within the guidelines of the constitution.

Since I read both sides, I’ve seen both sides attacked.

There’s a lot of articles that are like this: “Could Supreme Court’s Arizona Ruling Lead to Voting Messes Down the Road? Some court-watchers say the opinion might strip Congress of the power to regulate the ballot — but, for now, they can probably relax.”

Meanwhile, did you agree with Thomas? Or did you agree with Alito. Because they wrote separate dissenting opinions, which did not agree with each other.

Thomas argues that the congress has no power to say who can register to vote. I disagree with that, and if a state was registering illegals, I bet most people who are on his side would support congress passing a law forcing states to check citizenship. Thomas loves to use the arguments put out during the debate on the constitution. I think it is helpful, but don’t think it is as controlling as he likes to make it.

And I think he is wrong, and believe the founders DID expect that the federal government would have some say in the manner of federal elections, and that is why they put a complete clause in the constitution saying congress could have such power.

And while it didn’t get argued in this case, remember that it is a federal law that requires states to let blacks and women have the right to vote. I don’t think Thomas is actually arguing that, or would agree with that — I’m just saying that a cursory reading of his dissent, such as the paragraph you cited, would lead to that. Thomas simply took it so far as to say that the law congress DID pass did not prohibit requesting additional information, so it should be allowed. Again, I think he is wrong, in that congress authorized a commission to define the form, and the form states the method of adherance, and that method is, sadly, a mere swearing. Note the majority directly states that this might be a BAD interpretation of the law, which was NOT before the court, and so the state should ask the commission to fix their error, and sue if they don’t. My guess is you’d get a 5-4 decision in favor on that point.

I think where Thomas gets off is that the “Qualifications” were not at issue here, but the method of DETERMINING if the qualifications were met. The law already requires citizenship. That wasn’t at issue. What was at issue was the requirements for a citizen to prove that they qualify. That is a different issue, so his citation of electoral qualifications isn’t quite on point.

But my argument here isn’t that Thomas is wrong — I actually love his dissenting opinion, although I don’t agree with it, but my point is that it is DIFFERENT from Alito’s dissent.

Alito does NOT argue that congress has no authority. His argument was primarily that the particular framework in the majority opinion was unworkable, and that the court misunderstood the intent of the federal law: “ I do not think that this is what Congress intended. I also doubt that Congress meant for the success of an application for voter registration to depend on which of two valid but substantially different registration forms the
applicant happens to fill out and submit, but that is how
the Court reads the NVRA.”

Note that Alito is arguing NOT that the federal law is inappropriate or unconstitutional, just that it is being misinterpreted.

So, which is it? Is your agreement that the law is valid but misunderstood, or is your agreement that the law is invalid and congress has no right to pass such a law?

Alito thinks the majority muddled the waters. I was just noting that your article conflated differing opinions.

And yes, many people agree with you — but many of those who agree with you THINK this was about Voter Id, which was why I made that point, and why I discount agreement with the argument by people who don’t understand the case.

I certainly could have agreed with a majority opinion being Alito’s. This just doesn’t upset me because I don’t think the majority did what people claimed, and I also don’t think Scalia and Roberts are outside a reasonable interpretation of the constitution in their opinion.

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