Skip to content
Project 2025
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories
Protesters holding signs

Project 2025: Abortion policy

Supreme Court

The Supreme Court is a threat to American democracy

Arizona will upgrade voter registration services to settle a lawsuit

Arizona will upgrade voter registration services to settle a lawsuit

Arizona must upgrade its systems this month because it had not been in compliance with federal law that requires states update voter registration information when a person changes their address on a driver's license or state-issued ID card.

Hailshadow/Getty Images
Our Staff
By Our StaffJan 08, 2020
Our Staff
The Fulcrum staff.
See More Writings by author

Arizona has agreed to improve its voter registration services as part of a lawsuit settlement reached with voting rights groups.

The arrangement, announced Monday, could boost turnout in one of the nation's fastest growing and politically competitive states, where this fall both parties will be hotly contesting not only nine electoral votes in the presidential race but also a Senate seat and at least three House races.

The complaint filed two years ago against the Arizona's secretary of state's office and transportation department alleged the state has been violating the federal motor-voter law for years — by not updating a person's voter registration information when they changed their address on their driver's license or state-issued ID card.

At a September 2018 court hearing, the secretary of state's office acknowledged that nearly 400,000 Arizonans likely had an incorrect address on their registration records due to the state's failure to update the information in accordance with the 1993 law.

An incorrect address on a registration form not only jeopardizes a person's chances of casting a ballot on Election Day but also makes it less likely they will receive a mail-in ballot form ahead of time — a crucial driver of turnout in a state where about three-fourths of voters cast ballots that way.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

The settlement, which requires the state to upgrade its computer databases and electronic communications by the end of the month, was hailed as a win by voting rights advocates, including the League of Women Voters of Arizona, which joined Mi Familia Vota Education Fund and Promise Arizona as plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

"With this agreement, all qualified voters in Arizona can be certain that their address for voter registration has been updated when they change their address through the Motor Vehicle Department," Robyn Prud'homme-Bauer, a former LWV of Arizona co-president, said in a statement. "We applaud the Secretary of State and ADOT for helping Arizona close a gap in compliance of the National Voter Registration Act."

Latest news

Man atop a mountain
Democracy

America needs to open new frontiers

Vice President Harris at a podium
Election 2024

Will America dare break the glass?

Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito
Rule of Law

Is the Supreme Court partisan?

Read More

Painting of people voting

"The County Election" by George Caleb Bingham

Wikimedia Commons

Sister democracies share an inherited flaw

Myers is executive director of the ProRep Coalition. Nickerson is executive director of Fair Vote Canada, a campaign for proportional representations (not affiliated with the U.S. reform organization FairVote.)

Among all advanced democracies, perhaps no two countries have a closer relationship — or more in common — than the United States and Canada. Our strong connection is partly due to geography: we share the longest border between any two countries and have a free trade agreement that’s made our economies reliant on one another. But our ties run much deeper than just that of friendly neighbors. As former British colonies, we’re siblings sharing a parent. And like actual siblings, whether we like it or not, we’ve inherited some of our parent’s flaws.

Keep ReadingShow less
Members of Congress standing next to a sign that reads "Americans Decide American Elections"
Sen. Mike Lee (left) and Speaker Mike Johnson conduct a news conference May 8 to introduce the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Bill of the month: Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act

Rogers is the “data wrangler” at BillTrack50. He previously worked on policy in several government departments.

Last month, we looked at a bill to prohibit noncitizens from voting in Washington D.C. To continue the voting rights theme, this month IssueVoter and BillTrack50 are taking a look at the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act.

IssueVoter is a nonpartisan, nonprofit online platform dedicated to giving everyone a voice in our democracy. As part of its service, IssueVoter summarizes important bills passing through Congress and sets out the opinions for and against the legislation, helping us to better understand the issues.

BillTrack50 offers free tools for citizens to easily research legislators and bills across all 50 states and Congress. BillTrack50 also offers professional tools to help organizations with ongoing legislative and regulatory tracking, as well as easy ways to share information both internally and with the public.

Keep ReadingShow less
Trump and Biden at the debate

Our political dysfunction was on display during the debate in the simple fact of the binary choice on stage: Trump vs Biden.

Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

The debate, the political duopoly and the future of American democracy

Johnson is the executive director of the Election Reformers Network, a national nonpartisan organization advancing common-sense reforms to protect elections from polarization.

The talk is all about President Joe Biden’s recent debate performance, whether he’ll be replaced at the top of the ticket and what it all means for the very concerning likelihood of another Trump presidency. These are critical questions.

But Donald Trump is also a symptom of broader dysfunction in our political system. That dysfunction has two key sources: a toxic polarization that elevates cultural warfare over policymaking, and a set of rules that protects the major parties from competition and allows them too much control over elections. These rules entrench the major-party duopoly and preclude the emergence of any alternative political leadership, giving polarization in this country its increasingly existential character.

Keep ReadingShow less
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Voters should be able to take the measure of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., since he is poised to win millions of votes in November.

Andrew Lichtenstein/Getty Images

Kennedy should have been in the debate – and states need ranked voting

Richie is co-founder and senior advisor of FairVote.

CNN’s presidential debate coincided with a fresh batch of swing-state snapshots that make one thing perfectly clear: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may be a longshot to be our 47th president and faces his own controversies, yet the 10 percent he’s often achieving in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and other battlegrounds could easily tilt the presidency.

Why did CNN keep him out with impossible-to-meet requirements? The performances, mistruths and misstatements by Joe Biden and Donald Trump would have shocked Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, who managed to debate seven times without any discussion of golf handicaps — a subject better fit for a “Grumpy Old Men” outtake than one of the year’s two scheduled debates.

Keep ReadingShow less
I Voted stickers

Veterans for All Voters advocates for election reforms that enable more people to participate in primaries.

BackyardProduction/Getty Images

Veterans are working to make democracy more representative

Proctor, a Navy veteran, is a volunteer with Veterans for All Voters.

Imagine this: A general election with no negative campaigning and four or five viable candidates (regardless of party affiliation) competing based on their own personal ideas and actions — not simply their level of obstruction or how well they demonize their opponents. In this reformed election process, the candidate with the best ideas and the broadest appeal will win. The result: The exhausted majority will finally be well-represented again.

Keep ReadingShow less
© Copyright 2024