Opening Statement
When analyzing the question at hand it is important to understand two things:
1. What is the effective delegatory power of the constitutional amendment
2. What is a reasonable limitation?
To answer the first question we need to look at the amendment, it says "Individuals may be required by the Azalea Isles Government to complete a voter registration process in order to qualify to run for office, and to vote." Registration is defined per the oxford dictionary as the "the act of making an official record of something, such as a person, a birth, or a vehicle", so when you register something you are simply letting the government know about things that already exist.
Is this a reasonable limitation? absolutely this is a reasonable boundary that does not obstruct too much with fundamental right to vote.
Voter Registration Act
This is where we start we have problems . The act says that " Citizens completing this registration must detail their legal name, their plot of primary residence, and need to show proof that they have registered their documents. Voter registration can be updated at any time, but primary residences cannot be changed once the electoral period begins". The amendment only imposes the limitation that registration may be required in order to vote, it does not however give government the authority to create
new criteria, in the second part of 2(b) we see this new criteria be created. Citizens must have a pre-registered primary residence at the start of the electoral period, Plaintiff was unable to exercise this fundamental constitutional right because he attempted to register within the electoral period and the act of "registering" his primary residence was considered a "change'.
The constitutional amendment never gave government the power to create
new criteria, for example if suddenly a new registration requirement such as "you must have earned $10,000 within the last week " was created this would be unconstitutional as the amendment only gives government the ability to impose a need to "register" this being "the act of making an official record of something, such as a person, a birth, or a vehicle".
However must importantly of all, is this new criteria a reasonable limitation to Plaintiff's ability to exercise his constitutional rights? It is very clearly not. Government should try to safeguard the constitutional rights of citizens and it should perform its role of "registering" up to the last possible day and to the best of his capabilities. Registering can be a reasonable limitation but it certainly is not in the current way.
Now we also contend that registering your address for the first time constitutes a "change" as defined by the voter registration act, you cant change something that does not exist and if no address exists on record you are simply filling in a box. A change would need you to erase something in the box and replace it with something else.
Your Honour, we believe that because of the aforementioned reasons the requirements inside the voter registration act, not only pose an unreasonable limitation on the constitutional rights of plaintiff but also overstep the limitations of the amendment.