On citizenship

It's now official: you needn't be a citizen in order to vote! Says the New York Times in one of the shortest news stories of the week (copied in its entirety):

A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit struck down a state law that requires people to provide proof of American citizenship to register to vote, saying the law conflicts with the federal National Voter Registration Act. Nina Perales, national senior counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said that few illegal immigrants tried to register, but that 30,000 citizens had been rejected for registration under the law, which voters passed in 2004.

One of the judges on that panel, as I learned elsewhere, was my former favorite justice, Sandra Day O'Connor. What am I missing here? If a state may not require its citizens to be citizens before they can vote, what the hell does citizenship mean? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford