Former President Donald Trump is likely to get some help from the right-wing bloc of the Supreme Court in interfering with the 2024 presidential election, wrote former White House ethics counsel Norm Eisen for Slate on Thursday.
"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," wrote Eisen.
"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."
At issue is a lawsuit by the Republican Party to enforce citizenship verification to vote in Arizona, a state that is frequently decided by the narrowest of margins. The Supreme Court left in place a stay on the verification being used to vote — but allowed the verification to take effect for people registering to vote.
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This, Eisen wrote, signals at least some of the right-wing justices want to revisit prior rulings that Congress prohibited such restrictions in the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, which prior conservative courts, led by Justice Antonin Scalia, championed.
"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," wrote Eisen.
And studies show this is more than sufficient to safeguard the vote, with illegal noncitizen voting vanishingly rare. The GOP's requirements, which require extra documentation like a birth certificate or passport, could increase the burden for some voters — particularly college students who don't have these types of documents with them.
"Not only are Arizona’s restrictions burdensome, they are unnecessary," concluded Eisen. "States have many existing safeguards in place to ensure that noncitizens are not on the voter rolls and cannot cast ballots. For example, states can cross-reference state DMV records, jury duty records, and Social Security records to ensure that noncitizens do not register to vote."
