Arizona's federal-only voters are concentrated on college campuses, data show

Published By: Rome News Tribune
Author: Kae Petrin
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Young adults living on or near college campuses in Arizona are disproportionately affected, and potentially disenfranchised, by the state's unique voting laws requiring documented proof of U.S. citizenship to vote in state and local elections, a Votebeat analysis found.

The laws have since 2013 been splitting the state's voters into two buckets: Those who have provided documented proof of citizenship, and those who haven't. Those who haven't are placed on a "federal-only" list, and are only permitted to vote in federal elections.

In pushing for stricter laws, Republican lawmakers have said the federal-only list potentially allows non-citizens to vote illegally. But an analysis of the roughly 32,000 voters on the federal-only list, and where they live, found that federal-only voters in the state are concentrated in areas where residents are simply unlikely to have easy access to documents proving their citizenship, such as college campuses and a Phoenix homeless shelter.

In fact, 18- to 24-year-olds are three times more likely to be federal-only voters than people over the age of 24, according to an analysis comparing the ages of federal-only voters with U.S. Census estimates of the entire state population.

Student voting advocates say that the findings make a known problem even more clear: The requirement to provide documents to become a full-ballot voter is often preventing students who move to Arizona to attend college from voting in local and state elections.

A federal judge is weighing two new provisions that would make these laws even more restrictive, and require more frequent citizenship checks, leaving voting advocates worrying that even more eligible voters will be blocked or discouraged from voting. The trial concluded in mid-December, and the judge will soon decide if those two provisions will go into effect.

"They are just trying to make it harder for people to become voters," said Kyle Nitschke, a co-executive director for the Arizona Students' Association.

There are only two voting precincts in the state with more than 1,000 federal-only voters. One is in Tucson, encompassing most of the University of Arizona campus and its dorms, along with student housing south of campus. The other is the Tempe precinct that encompasses the vast majority of the Arizona State University campus, including the Memorial Union where some voter registration drives and civic engagement events are held.

When conducting voter registration drives on these campuses, Nitschke said, the students' association often speaks with out-of-state students who don't have Arizona IDs, and haven't brought their birth certificate or passport with them to school.

After seeing Votebeat's analysis, One Arizona, an organization that provides resources to a coalition of 30 community groups and helps organize voter registration drives, said they were going to research the topic further, for future training purposes.

"There does seem to be significance in the correlation to campus ties and we're interested in investigating further," Paloma Ibañez, One Arizona's interim executive director said.