The New Jim Crow: Two-Tier Voting

The Supreme Court's recent decisions involving Arizona demanding proof of citizenship when voting and crippling the Voting Rights Act has now directly led to at least two states instituting second-class citizenship for those who can't prove they are US citizens.  Jim Crow is alive and well, and it's called two-tier voting.

Officials in Arizona and Kansas are making preparations for elections with two categories of voters. There will be those who provided proof of citizenship when they registered to vote, and will therefore be able to vote in all local, state, and federal elections. And then there will be those who did not provide proof of citizenship when they registered. Those people will only be able to vote in federal contests -- if at all. 

In both states, the preparations underway are reactions to the Supreme Court's June ruling in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council, the legal battle over Arizona's 2004 voter identification law, known as Proposition 200. While the headlines in June painted the ruling as a blow to Proposition 200, officials in both Arizona and Kansas have chosen to focus on the leeway the Supreme Court left them. Kansas State Election Director Brad Bryant laid out the argument in an email he sent to county election officers at the end of July. 

"As the Supreme Court made clear, its decision applies only to 'federal registration forms' and covers only federal elections," Bryant wrote, according to a copy of the email provided to TPM. "States remain free to require proof of citizenship from voters who seek to also vote in state elections." 

Using that logic, both states have made moves toward two-tier systems.

In other words, the awful SCOTUS decision in Arizona v Inter Tribal Council means that Arizona and Kansas are now free to use Voter ID to exclude people from being able to vote at all in state or local elections.  That's horrifying, and it means other GOP-controlled states will surely follow suit.

And remember, it's the states that get to decide what "proof of citizenship" means, unless you have a federal ID...and if the state chooses to recognize it as such.  Kansas in particular is designing a confusing system that would have two different voter registration forms, one for state and one for federal elections, and two different ID requirements.

If you think that's a disaster in the making for 2014 elections, you're correct.  And that's the point.  More of this will be coming, so count on it.