Republicans ask the Supreme Court to disenfranchise thousands of swing state voters

The Republican Party wants the Supreme Court to weigh in on a nauseatingly complicated voting rights case, which could potentially disenfranchise thousands of presidential voters in the swing state of Arizona. The case is known as Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota.

The case involves an astoundingly convoluted system Arizona uses to register certain voters — one that emerged from 20 years of conflicting state and federal laws, plus seemingly endless litigation over those laws. Among other things, Republicans claim that several thousand Arizona voters should be allowed to vote only in congressional elections, and that they are barred from voting in state and local elections or voting for the president.

In 2004, Arizona enacted a law which requires new voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship (such as a passport or a birth certificate) when registering to vote in the state. This state law, however, conflicts with a federal law known as the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which requires states to register voters who submit a standardized federal registration form.

That form requires Arizona voters to swear, under penalty of perjury, that they are in fact citizens. But it does not require them to submit other proof of citizenship.