PHOENIX−The League of Women Voters of Arizona joined voting rights organizations in a lawsuit filed against Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan Monday, nine months after notifying her office of significant federal voting rights violations.
The lawsuit, filed by the League of Women Voters of Arizona, Mi Familia Vota Education Fund, and Promise Arizona, details how Arizona has continued to engage in known violations of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), a law the League was instrumental in passing. The ACLU, the ACLU of Arizona, Demos, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law are representing the plaintiff organizations.
This is not happening in Arizona. The Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) regularly sends driver’s license address changes to Secretary Reagan’s agency, but the Secretary of State does not use this information to update voter registration records.
In November 2017, voting rights groups informed Secretary Reagan that these legal violations deny qualified citizens the right to vote and disproportionately harm voter participation by low-income Arizonans and people of color. Failing to update voter address information leaves many voters at risk of disenfranchisement. Voters whose addresses are incorrect in the voter rolls may not receive an early ballot or may be forced to cast a provisional ballot on Election Day. In Arizona, provisional ballots are not counted if they are cast out-of-precinct.
Arizona’s violations of federal law mean many qualified individuals will not vote in the 2018 election cycle. Almost 70 percent of Arizonans have changed their residential address in the decade between 2000 and 2010, the second highest rate of any state. In 2016, approximately 75 percent of votes cast in Arizona were ballots received by mail.
In the suit, Plaintiffs are asking the Court to order the SOS to count the federal election votes casts by the effected registered voters regardless of where in Arizona they cast their ballots and to send out a mailer to all effective registered voters informing them of the problem and the options for correcting their voter registration addresses.