PHOENIX — State election officials are trying to block a Republican effort to cancel the registration of several hundred adult children of U.S. citizens — predominantly Democrats — who live overseas.

In legal briefs filed in Maricopa County Superior Court, Assistant Attorney General Karen Hartman-Tellez acknowledged that the voters in question have never lived in Arizona. Instead, they were born elsewhere, live overseas, and are U.S. citizens because of their parents.

Under a 2005 state law, these people have been allowed to vote absentee, just like their parents, who once lived in Arizona and kept their state registration.

The Arizona Republican Party and the Republican National Committee, in a lawsuit filed last year, contend that it violates a provision in the Arizona Constitution which says voting is available only to those who have at some point resided in the state.

But Hartman-Tellez, who represents Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, told Judge Michael Herrod that lawmakers were well within their power when they unanimously adopted the 2005 law, one sponsored by then Rep. Doug Quelland, a Phoenix Republican.

“The Legislature protected the right to vote for a discrete group of U.S. citizens who would otherwise lose that most fundamental right,” she said. In other words, if these people who are the children of U.S. citizens from Arizona who are living overseas — and U.S. citizens themselves — cannot vote in Arizona, then they would have no right to vote anywhere at all.

“The court should not construe a constitutional provision intended to ensure the fundamental right to vote as preventing the Legislature from ensuring that right for children of overseas voters,” Hartman-Tellez said.

The federal Uniformed and Overseas Voters Absentee Voting Act permits Americans residing overseas to vote by mail in federal elections in the state where they lived. That includes both military members and civilians currently living overseas.

But attorney Kory Langhofer, representing the state GOP, said federal law still leaves it to the states to “prescribe substantive prerequisites” for voting in both federal and state elections.

This legal fight, which started last year and is still playing out in Herrod’s court, is over a handful of voters.

Five counties responded to subpoenas about those overseas voters who have never lived in the state: Maricopa, Mohave, Pima, Pinal and Yuma. Together, they identified 405 people who fit the category.

But Langhofer and the GOP are pursuing the case because they believe those in this group are more likely to be Democrats. He said more than 56% are registered with the Democratic Party versus 8.4% who signed up as Republicans, with the balance having no party affiliation or being signed up with a minor party.

In comparison, he said that Republicans represent 35.5% of the overall electorate in these counties, versus Democrats at 27.7%

“By any metric, [the law] is causing, on net, an electorate that is more Democrat in its composition than it would be if the franchise were limited to individuals who had established domicile in Arizona,” Langhofer told the judge.

Hartman-Tellez said that is irrelevant.

She said even the GOP has conceded in its filing that party affiliation does not conclusively determine who someone will vote in a general election. Hartman-Tellez said there is no evidence of who any of these people actually voted for.

Langhofer told Herrod that the 2005 law is an “unconstitutional expansion of the electorate to include ineligible individuals.” And that, he said, deprives other parties — like the Arizona Republican Party and the Republican National Committee — of “a fair process and accurate result.”

The lawsuit doesn’t state why the people at issue have never resided in the United States. But Langhofer said that it is not relevant to his argument about the constitutionality of the 2005 law.

Herrod has not said when he will rule.