Constitutional Law

Longtime Voter Struggles With Arizona's Sweeping Election Law

Since 1932, Shirley Freeda Preiss has voted in every U.S. presidential election. Now living in Surprise, Ariz., Preiss is battling the state’s 2004 voter identification law in hopes of voting in this fall’s general election. The Arizona law requires residents to prove citizenship to vote and according to Anne T. Denogean, a columnist for the Tucson Citizen, Preiss hasn’t been able to prove her citizenship. Preiss, a 97-year-old retired schoolteacher, doesn’t have an Arizona driver’s license, a passport, because she’s never traveled outside the nation, and isn’t a Native American, so she doesn’t have tribal identification forms. Nor does Preiss have a birth certificate for she was born in Clinton, Ky., before the state began issuing birth certificates. Preiss explained to the newspaper columnist that it is her patriotic and familial duty to vote and that she is convinced the Arizona voter ID law violates her constitutional rights.

The Arizona Advocacy Network agrees and has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law. A federal judge has heard arguments in the case but has not yet ruled. Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s voter identification law, considered one of the nation’s strictest. The high court in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board concluded that the law’s challengers failed to prove that the law unconstitutionally burdened the right to vote. For in-depth analysis on voter identification laws, see Carrie Apfel’s ACS Issue Brief, “The Pitfalls of Voter Identification Laws in a Post-Crawford World,” and watch video of a 2008 ACS National Convention Breakout Session panel discussion, “Voter Participation: Examining the Impact of State Election Laws.”

Full post as published by ACS Blog on August 08, 2008 (boomark / email).