How dare they prove citizenship! And I'm still flabbergasted that Scalia went along with this. It's understandable that this is supposed to be federal law. But in an age when the federal government doesn't enforce the law, at some point the states must pick up the slack. At any rate, I'll save the label of 'judicial fiat at it's finest' for the later decision handed down on the oxymoron known as 'gay marriage'.NBCNews: The Supreme Court on Monday struck down an Arizona law that requires people to submit proof of citizenship when they register to vote.
The vote was 7-2, with Justice Antonin Scalia writing for the court. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, two members of the court’s conservative wing, dissented.
Several states said that such a law reduces voter fraud, but civil rights groups said it was an effort to discourage voting by legal immigrants. The case was argued and decided at a time when the country is considering how to change its immigration laws.
Citizenship is a requirement to vote in any federal election, and the federal registration form requires people to state, under penalty of perjury, that they are American citizens. States can use their own forms, but they must be equivalent to the federal form.
The Arizona law, known as Proposition 200, adopted by Arizona voters in 2004, went further than the federal form by requiring applicants to provide proof of citizenship.
Between this Administration, this Congress and this Court, we continue to witness the grinding down of our country on a daily basis. And that we rely on an unelected nine-member oligarchy to give a 'yay' or 'nay' in any of these matters proves the failure that's become of our federal government.
ADDENDUM: Levin says the Supreme Court, once again, got it WRONG!
The constitutional attorney further explains...TheRightScoop: Mark Levin opened his radio show today explaining why the ruling by the Supreme Court on Arizona’s voter registration law that required proof of citizenship was not only wrong, but why it ignores both the Constitution and American history.
"The Constitution is set up to give individual states the power to determine who is eligible to vote in elections. Did you know that? And had the Constitution not provided that, it would not have been ratified. Yet again, this was a key issue at the state ratification conventions. The federal government was granted the power to set the rules for the time, the place and the manner for holding elections for federal office. The purpose of the federal government having any power at all concerning elections was to make sure that the individual states would actually elect and send representatives to the federal congress; not so that the federal congress could dictate qualifications to the states. There is no debate about this history. The bottom line is that the federal government gets to say how and when elections are held. The states are supposed to decide who gets to vote."Mark went on to describe Landmark Legal Foundation's role in this case, as well as how Prop 200 prevented up to 20,000 fraudulent votes in the six months that the law was allowed to be in effect.
"While the federal government might be able to require Arizona to use a particular federal form by registering voters for federal elections, the state has the absolute constitutional authority to require individuals to prove who they are, to demonstrate who they are in order to determine if they're eligible to vote. That little piece under our federal Constitution is left to the states, or the states would have not ratified the Constitution. You want to know why? Because the states feared the federalization of the states determining eligibility for their voters."Mark says states are now becoming bystanders to the federal government when it comes to elections.
"When the Supreme Court's wrong, what recourse do we have? This is supposed to be a Constitutional Republic. It's really not."
