Trump wants voters to prove citizenship. Arizona tried that and bungled it.
For 30 years, no one questioned Danny Dobosz’s citizenship when the lifelong Republican cast his ballot.
So when a letter arrived from a local election official last month asking him to send back a copy of his birth certificate to prove he was an American citizen who was eligible to vote, he tossed it in the trash at his home in Yuma, Arizona. Dobosz, an ardent supporter of President Donald Trump who was born in New Mexico, said he had “no real ambition” to verify his legal status to anyone — even if his ability to vote is jeopardized.
“It’s their duty to prove I’m not,” said the 48-year-old owner of a water-softening business.
“I know I’m a citizen. I pay my taxes,” he said. “Obviously we’re citizens — it’s on their end to fix it, not our end.”
If Dobosz and about 200,000 other Arizona voters don’t provide citizenship documentation, they will not get to vote in next year’s race for governor. State officials last year discovered they had failed to keep records confirming whether about 4 percent of the state’s 4.4 million registered voters were citizens, and they’ve been hustling to fix the problem ever since. They have set off on a scramble that has prompted incredulity, hostility and suspicion from longtime voters like Dobosz who are now learning they are among those caught in the state-caused voter registration blunder.
Trump and Republicans, who have claimed without proof that large numbers of noncitizens are illegally casting ballots, are pushing for similar policies nationally. It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, and the glitches with Arizona’s registration system illustrate the risks of enacting policies that may keep eligible voters from participating in the democratic process.