State

State agrees to give provisional ballot to voters without ID

Wednesday, September 7, 2005 9:58 PM CDT

PHOENIX (AP) - Arizona officials agreed Wednesday to let voters without identification cast provisional ballots but not to count those ballots unless voters later produce identification.

Gov. Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Terry Goddard, who are both Democrats, accepted a revised elections procedure approved previously by Republican Secretary of State Jan Brewer to implement a voter identification provision in a voter-approved law that appeared on the state's 2004 ballot as Proposition 200.

Brewer's revised procedure was a reaction to the U.S. Justice Department's recent decision to revise its earlier position on the voter ID issue.

The department had said in April that the state could implement the Proposition 200 requirement that voters produce identification at polling places. However, a clarification issued last week said the federal Help America Voter Act of 2002 required that a person claiming to be an eligible voter and willing to sign a statement to that effect be given at least a provisional ballot.

The clarification in a letter signed by acting Assistant Attorney General Bradley J. Schlozman also said it's up to states to decide whether a person who casts a provisional ballot is actually eligible to vote and therefore whether a provisional ballot should be counted.

Brewer, who had wrangled with Goddard and Napolitano for months on the implementation of Proposition 200's voter ID requirement, then proposed the revised procedure.

''Throughout this long process, I have stood firm on implementing an ID requirement when voting at the poll places, just as the voters called for in Proposition 200,'' Brewer said in a statement after Napolitano and Goddard accepted the change Friday.

Arizona is required to obtain Justice Department clearance of election laws and procedures under the federal Voting Rights Act, and Goddard said he would revise the state's pending request for clearance to incorporate the new change.

The voter ID requirement, a step which supporters said would help deter voter fraud but which critics said would hinder voter participation, is one of two major election-related provisions in Proposition 200. The second requires that people prove citizenship when registering to vote, has not been challenged.