Democracy and Voting

by Jeremy Leaming

A renowned social justice leader Bob Edgar died today at age 69. Edgar was a U.S. congressman for 12 years, leader of the National Council of Churches and since 2007 the president and CEO of Common Cause. While in Congress, he served on the committee that investigated the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Edgar, who the Religion News Service’s Adelle M. Banks reports died of a heart attack, was also a “bridge builder.” As head of the National Council of Churches he helped bring together an array of faith groups to advance social justice causes. “Early on,” Banks writes, “Edgar sensed that the venerable ecumenical agency was losing its public voice, and was one of the early supporters of Christian Churches Together in the USA, which brought the NCC’s mainline Protestant, Orthodox and black churches together with evangelicals and Catholics for the first time.”

U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr., Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, worked with Edgar during his time in the Congress and noted that he was the “principal co-author of legislation that updated the G.I. bill following the abolition of the draft ….” Edgar, Conyers noted, also served on the Veterans Affairs Committee, where he worked to address concerns over the deployment of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, and of veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.”

Edgar led Common Cause a nonpartisan group devoted to ensuring Congress works efficiently and is accountable to citizens. Last year the group lodged a federal lawsuit against the use of the filibuster, which has been used primarily and with increasing frequency by Republican senators to scuttle judicial nominations and thwart popular legislation, such as modest measures to promote gun safety. Edgar in a press release about the lawsuit said the filibuster had been used to “pretty much shut the place down.” He noted that far too often it would take a supermajority or 60 senators to allow much of any action to occur.

by Spencer Overton, a Professor of Law at The George Washington University Law School and a Senior Fellow at Demos.This piece is crossposted at The Huffington Post.

I attended yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court oral argument in the Arizona voter registration case.  The argument went well generally, but Justice Alito suggested the Justices would create a “crazy” double standard by requiring that Arizona election officials accept the federal registration form. 

Alito’s concerns are unwarranted.  Arizona chose to create two standards when it chose to add special “proof of citizenship” to register. 

The National Voter Registration Act requires that all states “accept and use” a single, uniform voter registration form for federal elections (states can also still use their own registration forms). 

The Federal Form requires that prospective voters check a box and sign an affirmation that they are U.S. citizens under penalty of perjury. 

Arizona, however, adopted a state law requiring “satisfactory proof” of U.S. citizenship to register, such as a birth certificate, U.S. passport, or state driver’s license that shows citizenship. As a result, Arizona rejected over 31,000 registrations that lacked its “proof of citizenship” -- including Federal Forms -- even though Arizona concedes it has no evidence that any of these individuals were non-citizens.

My take is that Arizona must accept all Federal Forms that comply with the citizenship affirmation rules set by Congress. The federal Act was designed to expand participation in federal elections by streamlining the registration process with a simple, uniform Federal Form that prevents states from piling on additional hurdles to register.  Indeed, as Justice Sotomayor mentioned, Congress explicitly rejected an amendment that would have allowed states to require “documentary evidence” of U.S. citizenship.