Down in Arizona, they have been able to "protect the integrity of the voting system," according to State Rep. Russell Pearce, by keeping a 97-year old woman from voting.
Shirley Preiss, a resident of Surprise, Arizona, wanted to re-register when she moved to Arizona to live with her son, Joey, a 78-year old veteran. But the state of Arizona requires proof of citizenship and Ms. Preiss can’t prove to the satisfaction of the people of Arizona that she is an American. Ms. Preiss was born in Kentucky before that state issued birth certificates. Ms. Preiss can’t get a "delayed birth certificate" because everyone who could have identified her place of birth is dead. The schools she attended in Tennessee don’t exist anymore and all their records are lost. Ms. Preiss has never left the US so she has never had a passport. She hasn’t driven in many years so her driver’s license has expired.
The only things Ms. Preiss could produce were her Medicaid and Social Security cards and an expired Texas driver’s license. That was insufficient for the people of Arizona and a woman who has voted in 19 presidential elections (every election since 1932 when she voted for FDR), a woman who was born before women had the right to vote, was unable to vote for the first major party woman presidential candidate in the Arizona Democratic primary.
As her son said, "I’m pissed. She’s an American citizen who worked her whole life and I want her to vote. The sons of bitches are taking away our Constitution."
The cause of this is the mythical voter registration fraud that states like Arizona are using to keep the poor (and Democratic) from voting. Arizona has rejected 40,000 applications for voter registration and yet they have no idea how many of those people really are American citizens who are being denied their most fundamental right, the right to vote.
Linda Brown of the Arizona Advocacy Network said, "Arizona has a long, shameful tradition of voter suppression. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 actually names Arizona as one of the states that can’t pass laws on voting without approval from the Department of Justice. When voters passed the 2004 ballot initiative that restricted voting, the career attorneys at the Justice Department wanted to block it, but they were overruled by the political appointees."
Read "political appointees" as Bush/Republican hacks.
You can read more about this here.