A U.S. District Court Judge's
ruling this week that federal officials must help Arizona and Kansas enforce state laws requiring new voters to prove they are U.S. citizens is a big victory for the two states, says Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne.
"This case started with a trial, and a federal district judge here in Arizona found after that trial that voter fraud is a significant problem in Arizona," he told Newsmax TV's John Bachman, J.D. Hayworth and Morgan Thompson.
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"There were over 200 people who swore on jury commissioner forms that they were not citizens who were found to have registered to vote. Now, only about 10 percent of people get these jury forms. So you really have to multiply it by 10, which means that, on this basis alone, there are at least 2,000 people in Arizona who registered fraudulently and we have statewide elections that have been won by less than 2,000 votes," he said.
"So voter fraud is a significant problem and this helps us assure that only American citizens, and not illegal aliens, will vote."
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Horne served as Arizona Department of Education Superintendent of Public Instruction from 2003- 2011.
He claimed that there is a liberal media cover-up of voter fraud in Arizona. "The media have been constantly in a — it's especially our newspaper and one of the channels that's connected with the newspaper have been running articles saying that voter fraud is a myth, and they've been defending that by counting how many people were actually prosecuted," Horne said.
"I mentioned earlier to you that over 200 people — which, it came out of a sample of 10 percent so it really means over 2,000 people — were caught having registered to vote and then swearing on a commissioner form that they were not citizens. In the trial, it came out that of those 200 people, only 10 were prosecuted because local county attorneys have robbery, rape, murder, all kinds of serious crimes to deal with and limited resources so they don't necessarily give a high priority to prosecuting voter fraud cases."
Horne continued, "But the evidence at the trial proved that voter fraud is a serious problem and the number of prosecutions is a completely false metric, and they're using that to cover up the problem and make people falsely believe that voter fraud is not a serious problem when, in fact, we have a federal district judge that listened to evidence for six days and concluded that it is a serious problem."
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As for what the ruling means for other states, Horne said, "Assuming this decision will be upheld on the merits . . . on appeal…[it] will establish that the states have a right to ask for evidence of citizenship when they're registered voters if they want to. And so it won't require more litigation. The states can just go ahead and do it. So any state that wants to, it's just up to their legislatures or their voters, if they have initiatives, can pass a law saying if you want to register to vote, show evidence of citizenship because we only want American citizens to vote and not illegal aliens."
Horne rejected the notion that requiring proof of citizenship causes voter disenfranchisement. "In fact, we have a finding by our trial court, after a six-day trial, that said that it's not an undue burden. You have a lot of choices in Arizona. You can write down your driver's license number or a non-operator's identification number the motor vehicles division will give you, or, if you're a naturalized citizen, your naturalization number, or a passport, or a birth certificate," he said.
"In fact, out of a state of over six million people, they were only able to find one single person who couldn't meet those requirements. She was about 100 years old and she'd been born in the Old South when they didn't have birth certificates there. And, of course, we would let her vote if she wanted to."
"So it's been actually demonstrated in trial that this is not a burden on citizens' ability to register and vote, but, of course, you would never get that from the liberal media," Horne added.
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