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A Votebeat analysis found that youth living on or near college campuses in Arizona are disproportionately affected, and likely to be disenfranchised, by the state’s unique voting laws that require documented proof of U.S. citizenship to vote in state and local elections.
Laws since 2013 have divided the state’s voters into two groups: those who have provided documented proof of citizenship, and those who have not. Those who are not listed on the “federal only” list are only allowed to vote in federal elections.
In pushing for tougher laws, Republican lawmakers said only the federal list would likely allow noncitizens to vote illegally. But an analysis of nearly 32,000 voters on the federal-only list, and where they live, found that the state’s federal-only voters are concentrated in areas where residents are unlikely to have easy access to documents proving their citizenship, such as a college campus and a homeless shelter in Phoenix. .
In fact, people ages 18 to 24 are three times more likely to be federal-only voters than people over 24, according to an analysis comparing the ages of federal-only voters with U.S. Census estimates for the entire state. population.
Student voting advocates say the results make a well-known problem more apparent: The requirement to submit documents to become a full-voter often prevents students who move to Arizona for college from voting in local and state elections.
A federal judge is considering two new provisions that would make those laws more restrictive and require more frequent citizenship checks, leaving voting advocates concerned that more eligible voters will be blocked or discouraged from voting. The last day of the trial is Tuesday, and the judge will soon decide whether these two provisions will take effect.
“They’re just trying to make it more difficult for people to become voters,” said Kyle Nitschke, co-executive director of the Arizona Federation of Students.
There are only two voting districts in the state with more than 1,000 federal voters. One is located in Tucson, and includes most of the University of Arizona campus and its dormitories, along with student housing south of campus. The other is the Tempe area, which is home to the vast majority of ASU’s campuses, including Memorial Union where some voter registration drives and civic engagement events are held.
When conducting voter registration drives at these campuses, the student association often speaks with out-of-state students who do not have Arizona IDs and did not bring their birth certificate or passport to school, Nitschke said.
After seeing Votebeat’s analysis, One Arizona, an organization that provides resources to a coalition of 30 community groups and helps organize voter registration drives, said it would conduct further research into the topic for future training purposes.
“There appears to be significance in the connection to campus relationships, and we are interested in investigating further,” said Paloma Ibañez, interim executive director of One Arizona.
Who is on the federal list only?
Arizona appears to be the only state currently with a law requiring documented proof of citizenship to vote. Hence, it is the only state that has a “federal only” list.
After Arizona enacted its Proof of Citizenship law in 2004, it began rejecting all voter registration applicants who did not include documented proof of citizenship.
Then, in 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that under the Voting Rights Act — which does not require notarization — Arizona must allow those electors to vote in federal elections. The state created a system in which it rejected any state voter registration application that did not contain documentation proving citizenship, but if the voter used a federal form, they would be registered as a federal voter only. Because few voters used the federal form, the federal-only list was relatively small at the time.
After the groups sued, in 2018, the state agreed to start adding voters to the federal list only regardless of whether they used the state or federal form. This has led to the list growing quickly.
As of October 2019, there were only about 17,000 federal voters, according to state data. By October 2020, there were about 36,000.
Federal law requires voters to attest that they are citizens by checking a check box on their voter registration form. To be sure, it is still possible that some of the voters on the federal-only list may not be US citizens.
In recent reports to the state Legislature, the Secretary of State’s Office wrote that in the first six months of 2023 alone, 1,324 registered voters reported they were not U.S. citizens when they were summoned for jury duty. Counties that receive information from these grand jury reports shall cancel those voter registrations after sending them notice allowing them 35 days to provide documents proving citizenship.
But it is rare for noncitizens to be caught voting illegally. Since 2010, the Attorney General’s Office has not prosecuted or convicted any noncitizen for illegal voting. There are two pending trials for noncitizens who either registered or voted in Arizona, according to a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office, but details of those cases are not public.
Voter citizenship laws, both new and old, are intended to provide consistent rules based on the agreed-upon principle that only U.S. citizens should vote, said Amy Yentes, vice president of the conservative Free Enterprise Club of Arizona.
“If you don’t need documented proof of citizenship, this is an invitation to pollute your systems with votes that shouldn’t be counted,” Yents said.
Voting rights groups that have sued the state over the new laws claim they will disproportionately disenfranchise minority voters. Arizona does not collect race or ethnicity information from voters when they register, so Votebeat’s analysis was unable to examine this claim.
But in court testimony, Michael McDonald, a political science professor at the University of Florida, told the judge that his analysis found that federal-only voters live in more diverse communities, compared with full-suffrage voters. He said the average Arizona registered voter community is 62.9 percent non-Hispanic whites, but the average federal voter community is only 47.3 percent non-Hispanic whites.
Naturalized citizens may also be more likely to be targeted for investigation under the new laws, and McDonald’s analysis found that naturalized citizens are more diverse than the overall electorate in Arizona.
For the most part, federal-only electors are spread evenly across the state, with small numbers showing up in thousands of precincts, based on a Votebeat analysis of county registration reports in October and a list of federal-only voters provided by the state in mid-November. . Most constituencies that have at least one federal electorate have fewer than a few dozen electors. But of the dozens of extreme districts with more than 300 federal voters, all but one are at least partly located on college campuses, the data show.
This exception can be explained in part: It has a homeless shelter in downtown Phoenix, an address that Arizonans who do not have permanent housing — and thus do not have a permanent place to store important documents — can use to register to vote. There are just 82 federally registered voters on the Central Arizona Shelter Services campus, according to Maricopa County data, but only 12 of them are active voters.
Leah Merriam-Mondale, an assistant professor at Northern Arizona University, until recently ran the NAU Votes Coalition, a campus voter advocacy group that works to outreach and register voters. Mundell said it’s always a challenge for out-of-state students to become full-voters because of documentation requirements.
Only about 19,000 of the roughly 32,000 voters on the list now are active voters. The rest are “inactive,” meaning they can’t vote until they prove they’re eligible, often because the county has a question about where they live. Counties cancel voter registrations for inactive voters if the voter does not respond to notices of eligibility, or does not vote, for two federal elections after being placed on the inactive list.
Only most federal voters, or 52.6%, do not belong to a political party; 28.8% Democrats; And 14.6% are Republicans. They are disproportionately young: 36.2% are between the ages of 18 and 24, while 9.8% of Arizonans are that age, according to American Community Survey estimates.
The large number of federal-only voters on college campuses does not surprise Nitschke. The organization held voter registration drives at four state universities in the fall at Arizona State University, the University of Arizona, NAU and Grand Canyon University in Phoenix. While driving, students fill out the registration form and turn it in on the spot. They often don’t have an in-state driver’s license, having just moved here for college, Nitschke said.
About 35% of the students the organization helped register using paper forms during trips this fall left the Arizona driver’s license or state ID field blank, so they registered only as federal voters, Nitschke said. Of these 192 students, the vast majority provided the last four digits of their Social Security number. (Social Security numbers are not considered verified proof of citizenship under state law.)
Nitschke said the association gives students instructions on how to later submit the necessary documentation to become full voters, such as sending an email to the county registrar’s office, but he assumes many don’t follow through.
A court case examining Arizona’s original citizenship law found that it was not an undue burden to require voters to provide documentation proving their citizenship in order to vote.
Two new laws passed in 2022, HB2492 and HB2243, would only subject federal voters to regular citizenship checks and potential investigations by the attorney general. Voting rights advocates told U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton that the laws would require officials to regularly use faulty or outdated databases to verify citizenship that would likely incorrectly identify noncitizens and would not provide adequate notice to those voters, potentially disenfranchising them. Vote. Eligible voters and the system are uneven across the state.
The laws were suspended and did not take effect due to the pending court case. Bolton issued a preliminary ruling in September that decided some of the most important parts of the laws would not remain in effect. That includes rules that would bar Arizona voters who do not provide documented proof of citizenship from voting for president or by mail. But it is still possible to appeal this decision.
The current system is already too restrictive, and the new laws will further inhibit student voting participation, Mundell said.
“Any way we restrict college students from participating is not helpful,” she said.
In his court testimony, Nitschke told the judge that if the laws were in place, the organization would change its practices to turn away students who do not have in-state IDs or other documentation.
“I think we will see fewer students register to vote in state and see more students register out of state or reside [registered] At addresses where they do not currently live – at their parents’ address.”
Jane Fifield is a Votebeat reporter based in Arizona. Call Jane on jfifield@votebeat.org. Kay Petrin is Votebeat’s data and graphics reporter. Contact Kay on kpetrin@chalkbeat.org.
The latest data on federal voters in Arizona has revealed an interesting trend – a concentration of voters on college campuses. According to the data, only federal voters in the state are heavily concentrated on college campuses, indicating a significant presence of young, politically engaged individuals in these areas. This trend sheds light on the potential influence of college students in shaping the political landscape in Arizona and highlights the importance of engaging and mobilizing this demographic in the upcoming elections.