Supreme Court 'Produces Truly Strange Results' in Arizona Decision

By Gina Miller
AmericanClarion.com

There is no end to the America-killing insanity coming from our enemy elites in Washington, and on Monday, the Supreme Court stupidly shot down a provision of Arizona’s voting law—which was approved by a 2004 referendum of the state’s residents—that required people to prove they are citizens of the United States when registering to vote by mail.

Chief Justice John “Obamacare Turncoat” Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy (who concurred in part and concurred in the judgment) joined the commie-left wing of the Court in the ruling. In part, the Court used Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution to “justify” the decision:

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of [choosing] Senators…

Can any rational person believe that when our Founding Fathers hammered out that passage, they in any way whatsoever intended it to mean that it is acceptable for Congress—or in this case the extra-congressional Election Assistance Commission—to prohibit states from requiring people to prove they are American citizens to register to vote? The idea is preposterous.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in his majority Opinion:

States retain the flexibility to design and use their own registration forms, but the Federal Form provides a backstop: No matter what procedural hurdles a state’s own form imposes, the Federal Form guarantees that a simple means of registering to vote in federal elections will be available.

Our right to vote is a precious one, but nowhere in the Constitution did our Founders say we must guarantee a “simple means of registering to vote,” after all, there was no “voter registration” at the founding of our nation. However, as it stood, Arizona’s law requiring proof of citizenship was not an undue or complex burden on the people. From the Court’s Opinion are listed the proof of citizenship documents accepted by Arizona for voter registration by mail:

(1) a photocopy of the applicant’s passport or birth certificate, (2) a driver’s license number, if the license states that the issuing authority verified the holder’s U. S. citizenship, (3) evidence of naturalization, (4) tribal identification, or (5) “[o]ther documents or methods of proof . . . established pursuant to the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.”

Which of us legal U.S. citizens could not easily provide one of those proofs? There is nothing wrong with Arizona’s law, and it is in harmony with the federal requirement that voters must be U.S. citizens, but this bad Supreme Court ruling is simply another step in the dismantling of our formerly free Republic, paving the way for the cementing of the Third World invasion. Oh, yeah, let’s just trust people to “swear” they are U.S. citizens—no way should Arizona be allowed to make them prove it! Idiocy!

This is coming at the same time the amnesty wickedness is being steamrolled through the Senate, with a number of Republicans, including the despicable Marco Rubio (who we once gullibly liked), ignorantly supporting it, to the outrage of the majority of legal American citizens.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito were the two voices of reason, each writing a true and proper dissent to the putrid Opinion. Justice Thomas writes:

Congress has no role in setting voter qualifications, or determining whether they are satisfied, aside from the powers conferred by the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-Fourth, and Twenty-Sixth Amendments, which are not at issue here. This power is instead expressly reposed in the States.

The history of the Voter Qualifications Clause’s [Article 1, Section 2, clause 1] enactment confirms this conclusion. The Framers did not intend to leave voter qualifications to Congress. Indeed, James Madison explicitly rejected that possibility:

“The definition of the right of suffrage is very justly regarded as a fundamental article of republican government. It was incumbent on the convention, therefore, to define and establish this right in the Constitution. To have left it open for the occasional regulation of the Congress would have been improper.” The Federalist No. 52, at 323 (emphasis added).

Congressional legislation of voter qualifications was not part of the Framers’ design.

Elsewhere in his dissent, Justice Thomas notes:

Arizona sets citizenship as a qualification to vote, and it wishes to verify citizenship, as it is authorized to do under Article 1, §2. It matters not whether the United States has specified one way in which it believes Arizona might be able to verify citizenship; Arizona has the independent constitutional authority to verify citizenship in the way it deems necessary.

… By requiring Arizona to register people who have not demonstrated to Arizona’s satisfaction that they meet its citizenship qualification for voting, the NVRA, as interpreted by the Court, would exceed Congress’ powers under Article I, §4, and violate Article 1, §2.

Justice Alito puts it clearly, as he states in his dissent:

The Court reads an ambiguous federal statute in a way that brushes aside the constitutional authority of the States and produces truly strange results.

Under the Constitution, the States, not Congress, have the authority to establish the qualifications of voters in elections for Members of Congress. See Art. I, §2, cl. 1 (House); Amdt. 17 (Senate). The States also have the default authority to regulate federal voter registration. See Art. I, §4, cl. 1. Exercising its right to set federal voter qualifications, Arizona, like every other State, permits only U. S. citizens to vote in federal elections, and Arizona has concluded that this requirement cannot be effectively enforced unless applicants for registration are required to provide proof of citizenship. According to the Court, however, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) deprives Arizona of this authority. I do not think that this is what Congress intended.

It’s sickening that only two justices got this one right. We’re in scary times here in America, and they’re getting scarier by the minute. Those of us who are truly watching can easily see that our nation has been taken over by evil people who are systematically undoing the foundation of our country. But, it’s not like Barack Obama (or whatever his name is) didn’t warn us that he was set to fundamentally transform the United States of America; it’s just that too few of us knew what a breathtakingly diabolical statement that was and that he did indeed mean it. In fact, it’s one of the very few truthful things Obama has ever said to us.