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The Republican Party is challenging the voting eligibility of some U.S. citizens who have always lived abroad, in what they’re calling a broader strategy ahead of next year’s midterms to clean up voter rolls and improve voter confidence.
But Democrats see the effort as a blatant attempt to disenfranchise eligible Democrats in key swing states.
The GOP terms the voters they are targeting as “never residents” because they are U.S. citizens but haven’t lived in the United States. Most frequently, they are children of U.S. citizens who have been in the military, or lived overseas for other reasons. Three-quarters of states have laws on the books allowing such citizens to vote by absentee or mail ballot in the same state where their parents or other relatives last lived or are registered.
Arizona is one of these states, and allows such expatriates to vote in federal, state, and local elections.
Republican lawmakers tried to change the law this year to disqualify citizens overseas who haven’t lived in Arizona, but Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, vetoed the proposal in May. Now, the Republican National Committee and Arizona Republican Party have filed a lawsuit alleging that the current law conflicts with the state constitution’s residency requirements for voting.
The lawsuit, filed June 30, claims that, because the state’s overseas and military voters are more Democratic than the voter roll as a whole, the law gives Democrats an unfair advantage. It asks the court to declare the law illegal and stop Arizona from registering any more voters who have never lived in the U.S.
Arizona does not track the total number of overseas voters who have never lived in the U.S., but local data suggests there aren’t many. The state’s second largest county, Pima County, for example, has around 670,000 registered voters, but only three who meet the definition.
Arizona Republican Party Chair Gina Swoboda said that for her, it’s not about the number or even the politics. She said she believes the law conflicts with the state constitution, and that citizens who have never lived in the U.S. or Arizona should not be able to vote in the state, because they “don’t have skin in the game.”
Republican state lawmakers debating the bill that Hobbs vetoed in May made similar comments, and described allowing these citizens to vote in Arizona as a “loophole” in state law.
Martha McDevitt-Pugh, the international chair of Democrats Abroad, an arm of the Democratic National Committee, disagrees, saying these overseas citizens have a stake in what happens here, and often have not only a “very American identity, but also an Arizona identity.”
“They are proud of their heritage,” she said.
Additional challenges likely ahead of midterms
A federal law called the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, or UOCAVA, permits U.S. citizens living overseas, as well as U.S. military members and their families, to vote. But under the U.S. Constitution, the federal government leaves it up to states to determine the rules for conducting their elections, including setting residency requirements.
The Arizona lawsuit is the latest of several challenges Republicans have made to the eligibility of overseas voters, and more are likely.
Just weeks before the November 2024 presidential election, Republicans filed lawsuits in three other swing states that allow citizens who have never lived in the U.S. to vote — North Carolina, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. The North Carolina and Michigan lawsuits, like Arizona’s, argued that the state laws violated the states’ constitutions. In Pennsylvania, the challenge was based on how the state verifies overseas voters’ eligibility.
In North Carolina, a local court ruled that overseas voters who have never lived in the state cannot vote in state and local elections, and the state has now changed its law. The Pennsylvania case was dismissed, and the Michigan case is pending at the state appellate court.
More cases are likely to follow the Arizona lawsuit. Such lawsuits “are absolutely part of our strategy heading into the midterms,” Kiersten Pels, the RNC’s national press secretary, wrote in an email.
“Allowing individuals who have never lived in the United States to register to vote dilutes the voting power of lawful Arizona voters,” Pels wrote.
In Arizona, the constitution says that to be eligible to vote, a person has to have “resided in the state for the period of time preceding such election as prescribed by law.” State law sets that period at 29 days prior to the election, which is the voter registration deadline. But since 2005, a different state law has also allowed a U.S. citizen to vote in the state even if they have never lived there, as long as their parent is a U.S. citizen who is registered to vote in the state. The 2005 bill was sponsored by a Republican lawmaker and received bipartisan support in the Legislature before being signed by Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat.
The lawsuit argues that the 2005 statute conflicts with the constitution’s requirement that the voter must have resided in the state to be eligible. Swoboda, who is also the RNC’s election integrity chair, said she would encourage the party to sue every state that has a similar law.
Alex Gulotta, Arizona director of voting rights group All Voting is Local, questioned why a U.S. citizen who is, for example, the adult child of a U.S. military member should not have the right to vote.
Both he and McDevitt-Pugh said they see the Republican lawsuit as another tactic to go after the rights of legal U.S. citizens. Gulotta called it “un-American.”
“What a waste of resources,” Gulotta said of the Republican challenge. “Do something valuable to help voters. Do not continue trying to undermine and disenfranchise voters.”
Who are the ‘never residents’?
Thirty-eight states and Washington, D.C., permit U.S. citizens who have never resided in the U.S. to vote if they have a relative who last domiciled in the state or who is still registered in the state, according to the Federal Voting Assistance Program. Typically, under these laws, the relative has to be a parent. But in a handful of states, it can be a spouse. In Washington state, it can be any “family member.”
Some states permit these voters to cast ballots in presidential and congressional elections only, while others, including Arizona, allow them to vote in federal, state, and local elections.
Democrats and Republicans stress different examples of the types of voters included in this category.
McDevitt-Pugh said these voters are often young adults with parents tied to the U.S. military, likely people who just turned 18 and are still living with or dependent on parents based overseas.
Swoboda said that might be true for many such voters, but not all. If a voter is 60 years old and has never lived in Arizona, she said, “why the hell should this person have any choice in policy that is not affecting them?”
Statewide data on these voters and their ages isn’t available, because counties aren’t required to track which of their voters check the box on the federal registration form saying they have never lived in the U.S.
Maricopa County, by far the state’s most populous county, said it does not track that.
But the state’s second and third largest counties, Pima and Pinal, do.
In Pima County, the three overseas voters who have never lived in the U.S. are in their 30s, according to county data. And of the 21 overseas voters registered in Pinal County who have never lived in the U.S., one is nearly 80 years old, while the rest are all between ages 19 and 36.
McDevitt-Pugh said such voters are U.S. citizens with voting rights regardless of their age. They often pay U.S. taxes, she said, and typically have strong ties in the state where they are registered.
“It really is an attack on the families themselves,” she said.
Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.
