Supreme Court's new ruling has a huge impact on Native voters

With the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that now requires potential voters to provide proof of citizenship with their state-created voter registration forms, Indigenous voting rights advocates want Indigenous people to know that they can still register to vote as tribal citizens.

Patty Ferguson-Bohnee said that Indigenous people living in Arizona who are enrolled in a federally recognized tribe can use their tribal identification numbers to prove their citizenship.

“As long as a tribal member is an enrolled member of their tribe, they can use that tribal ID number to register on the state form, and that will prove citizenship for purposes of voter registration,” she said, adding that it’s because all Indigenous peoples were declared citizens of the United States in 1924.

Ferguson-Bohnee is the Director of the Indian Legal Clinic and a Clinical Professor of Law at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. She also coordinates the Arizona Native Vote Election Protect Project, which focuses on protecting the right to vote for Indigenous voters in Arizona.

“If you prove you’re a Native American through using your enrollment number, your citizenship is verified,” she said because there is a space for Indigenous peoples to include that specific information on the state voter registration form.

“The people who are registering voters need to know that we can’t leave that blank because if you do not provide that on your state form, they will reject it,” Ferguson-Bohnee added.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Aug. 22 that Arizona can enforce part of a voter registration law being challenged in federal court, allowing the state to bar legal voters from registering weeks before the election.

Ferguson-Bohnee said the law will cause some confusion among organizations and people out in the community trying to register voters, and it may discourage voters from registering.

“The goal of the law was to create barriers to the ballot box,” she said. “And even to prevent eligible voters from registering to vote.”

Lower courts initially blocked the Arizona law in 2022, but in a5-4 order, the Supreme Court reinstated a portion of the law that allows the state to stop accepting state-created voter registration forms from Arizona residents unless they provide proof of citizenship.

The ruling means that potential voters who register to vote in Arizona using the state-created voter registration forms will need documentation proving citizenship for the registration to be valid. If no proof is provided, the state will reject the form — without informing them.

Ferguson Bohnee said there is no option to correct the form once it gets rejected, so she suggests that people register with the federal forms first. Then, when they have all the documentation readily available, their registration can be promoted to full-ballot voters.

“It’s very discouraging because it’s making a change right in the midst of the election process when people are registering people to vote,” Ferguson-Bohnee said. “This decision by the court is revising the playing field for election law.”

Not all Indigenous peoples may have their enrollment numbers available, but that shouldn’t discourage them from trying to register to vote. Ferguson-Bohnee said that is when they should register using the federal voter registration form.

She said that registering with a federal form only requires people to affirm their citizenship, not provide document proof, so people will be registered to vote in federal elections, including the presidential and senate races.

However, Ferguson-Bohnee said that if the voter can provide documentary proof of citizenship later, their status will be moved to a full ballot voter, which includes state elections — but that has to be done the Thursday before Election Day.

The court ruling has left some voting organizations baffled about their best course of action because it disrupts the plan of action that has been in motion within Indigenous communities for months.

Arizona Native Vote Executive Director Jaynie Parrish said it has left her team in limbo.

“We’re waiting to hear more directions on what our team needs to do,” Parrish said, adding they haven’t been provided a clear path forward on how this impacts Indigenous voters in Arizona.

Arizona Native Vote is a grassroots organization that works to increase civic engagement and election participation in tribal and rural communities. The organization often hosts voter registration events within Indigenous communities to register Indigenous people to vote.

“We’re just not sure the scope of how this will really impact tribal and rural communities,” she added, but she said she knows that whenever one group is targeted, others are impacted as well.

Parrish said there have always been difficulties for Indigenous peoples in Arizona when it comes to voting, whether it’s the rural addresses or access to polling locations.

Now, adding another layer of requirements, Parrish said, will be challenging because her on-the-ground team will need to find ways to accommodate that requirement for the Indigenous peoples they register to vote.

She said she is curious if it will simply involve adding additional printers and scanners to their efforts in the field so that they can photocopy the documents needed to send them in with voter registrations.

For now, the uncertainty means Parrish and her team are considering briefly suspending their on-the-ground voter registration efforts until they better understand what is happening.

“It’s disheartening,” Parrish said, adding that is what voter disenfranchisement is meant to do. “We’re at a crossroads, and we just have to keep pushing forward.”

Parrish said she hopes Indigenous voters don’t feel discouraged from participating in the election and to check on their voter registration status to ensure they can vote.

“It’s clearly a voter suppression tactic and is why groups like us exist to help our voters navigate and understand,” She said.

Ceridwen Cherry, the legal director for voter advocacy group VoteRiders, said there are about 41,000 federal-only voters in Arizona who are allowed to vote on federal races, but not state ones, because they haven’t provided proof of citizenship.

“That’s a pretty decent chunk of people who are in this category right now,” Cherry said. “We’re going to be doing outreach to all 41,000 of those voters in Arizona to offer them our services.”

Cherry said her organization partnered on a national study that found that about 21.3 million American citizens of voting age lack ready access to a document proving citizenship, such as a U.S. birth certificate, U.S. passport, naturalization certificate or citizenship certificate.

“The survey’s results indicate that requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote would create significant barriers for eligible voters,” the Brennan Center stated in a press release.

The survey also found that, of the 21.3 million American citizens lacking ready access to documentary proof of citizenship, at least 3.8 million don’t have these documents at all.

“That is what’s really concerning to us is that there are voters who are just going to be entirely disenfranchised from participation,” she added.

The survey also showed that 11% of American citizens of color who are voting age are unable to readily access documentary proof of citizenship, compared to 8% of white American citizens.

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