News Release
Arizona House Democrats
House Democratic Leader Reginald Bolding welcomed yesterday’s announcement that the United States Department of Justice is suing Arizona over House Bill 2492 which, before it passed earlier this year, Democrats and non-partisan legislative attorneys warned was an unconstitutional restriction on voting rights.
Protections to keep non-citizens from voting in Arizona are already robust, and they work. But, fueled by lies about the 2020 election, Republicans added onerous new and unneeded documentary requirements to use a federal voter registration form. HB2492 meant Arizona would no longer solely accept documents common in lower-income and Indigenous communities like a Tribal ID, birth certificates, passports, or naturalization papers without additional documentation. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke called HB2492 “a textbook violation” of the National Voter Registration Act and the 1965 Civil Rights Act.
“Arizona has an ugly history of disenfranchising Indigenous voters and other voters of color, We warned the Governor that he was writing a sad new chapter in that history by embracing the Big Lie and signing this bill,” said House Democratic Leader Reginald Bolding, “Now we welcome the DOJ’s intervention because it was clear this bill was unconstitutional and aimed at suppressing the vote from particular communities. This has to stop. Too many politicians in Arizona have been eager to embrace and spread misinformation about the 2020 election, even if their own attorneys are telling them their voter-suppression measures are plainly unconstitutional.”
