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Page Number: 13.0

10 

ARIZONA v. INTER TRIBAL COUNCIL OF ARIZ. INC. 

Opinion of the Court 

would  permit  a  State  to  demand  of  Federal  Form  appli-
cants  every  additional  piece  of  information  the  State
requires  on  its  state-specific  form.    If  that  is  so,  the  Fed-
eral Form ceases to perform any meaningful function, and 
would  be  a  feeble  means  of  “increas[ing]  the  number  of 
eligible citizens who register to vote in elections for Federal 
office.”  §1973gg(b).

Finally,  Arizona  appeals  to  the  presumption  against 
pre-emption sometimes invoked in our Supremacy Clause 
cases.  See,  e.g.,  Gregory  v.  Ashcroft,  501  U. S.  452,  460– 
461 (1991).  Where it applies, “we start with the assump-
tion that the historic police powers of the States were not 
to  be  superseded  by  the  Federal  Act  unless  that  was  the
clear and manifest purpose of Congress.”  Rice v. Santa Fe 
Elevator  Corp.,  331  U. S.  218,  230  (1947).    That  rule  of 
construction  rests  on  an  assumption  about  congressional 
intent:  that  “Congress  does  not  exercise  lightly”  the  “ex-
traordinary  power”  to  “legislate  in  areas  traditionally
regulated by the States.”  Gregory, supra, at 460.  We have 
never  mentioned  such  a  principle  in  our  Elections  Clause 
cases.5  Siebold,  for  example,  simply  said  that  Elections 

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a Federal Form, but also a separate set of either Arizona- or California-
specific  instructions  detailing  the  additional  information  the  applicant
must submit to the State.  In ours, every eligible voter can be assured 
that if he does what the Federal Form says, he will be registered.  The 
dissent  therefore  provides  yet  another  compelling  reason  to  interpret
the statute our way. 

5 United  States  v.  Gradwell,  243  U. S.  476  (1917),  on  which  the  dis-
sent relies, see post, at 3–4 (opinion of ALITO, J.), is not to the contrary—
indeed, it was not even a pre-emption case.  In Gradwell, we held that 
a  statute  making  it  a  federal  crime  “to  defraud  the  United  States”
did  not  reach election  fraud.    243  U. S.,  at  480,  483.    The  Court  noted 
that  the  provision  at  issue  was  adopted  in  a  tax-enforcement  bill,  and 
that  Congress  had  enacted  but  then  repealed  other  criminal  statutes 
specifically covering election fraud.  Id., at 481–483. 

The dissent cherry-picks some language from a sentence in Gradwell, 
see post, at 3–4, but the full sentence reveals its irrelevance to our case: