The legal team under the Democratic Party’s top election lawyer, Marc Elias, is suing to keep Arizona’s voter rolls as they are, even if they’re rife with ineligible voters.
According to a lawsuit filed on Monday, the legal team argued that SB1260, which Governor Doug Ducey signed into law in June, infringed on the right to vote as well as the rights of free speech and association. SB1260 requires county recorders to cancel voter registrations for persons registered to vote in another county, and makes it a felony to help cast a vote for an individual registered out of state.
Elias’ team claimed that SB1260’s language made it too easy for individuals or organizations to petition for the cancellation of voter registrations en masse. They asserted repeatedly throughout their complaint that it’s common for voters to have active registrations in more than one county, or even state.
“Though voting in more than one state is illegal, it is perfectly legal to be registered to vote in more than one state or more than one county in Arizona. In fact, it is quite common,” argued the lawyers.
Additionally, Elias’ team expressed a lack of confidence in the ability of county officials to cancel voter registrations upon request. They insisted that people who move frequently would be burdened by the new election integrity law.
“Being registered to vote in more than one state or county is not prohibited, and for good reason,” argued the lawyers. “People do not ordinarily think to affirmatively cancel their voter registration when they move, and there often is no obvious or easy way to do so. Nor is there any assurance that a jurisdiction will actually cancel a voter’s registration immediately upon receiving a request.”
Elias’ firm filed suit on behalf of the Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans, Voto Latino, and Priorities USA against Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, Attorney General Mark Brnovich, and all county recorders. Elias Law Group attorneys Aria Branch, Daniel Cohen, and Joel Ramirez joined Phoenix-based Roy Herrera of the Herrera Arellano firm to file the lawsuit.
Elias’ team posited that the felony provision of SB1260 would criminalize voter registration efforts made by the three plaintiff organizations, or even by a voter’s parents in the case of college students.
Elias offers updates on this and other election-related court cases via his media platform established in 2020, Democracy Docket.
Another lawsuit was filed on Monday challenging a separate election law in Arizona, HB2492 which requires individuals to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote. The Biden administration filed a similar lawsuit against the state early last month. The Scottsdale-based firm Papetti Samuels Weiss McKirgan and Washington, D.C.-based firm WilmerHale filed the latest lawsuit on behalf of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Arizona Democratic Party.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Maricopa County will operate 212 vote centers for the August 2022 primary — double what they had in 2020. By the general election, that number will increase up to 225; 14 of which were converted from outside drop boxes into full vote centers. The county promised to mail voters information about the closest vote centers.
The catch-all, “vote anywhere” system allowing voters to cast ballots at any location rather than a designated precinct has sparked controversy, with critics alleging that it makes fraud easier; namely, ballot harvesting. Voters may drop off their early ballots at vote centers.
Legislators made an attempt to prohibit vote centers. One such bill from State Senator Wendy Rogers (R-Flagstaff), SB1338, would’ve reinstated precinct voting as well as paper ballots and hand counting. It advanced out of one committee in the senate, but no further.
Another bill, HB2238 from State Representative Jake Hoffman (R-Queen Creek), sought to eliminate emergency vote centers. It failed in the Senate.
The county adopted vote centers amid the pandemic in 2020. They also released an informational video featuring their $10,000 “Phil the Ballot” mascot.
Pima County decided to follow in Maricopa County’s footsteps this year. They will halve their operations from nearly 280 voting precinct locations to 129 vote centers.
Democracy Docket, the brainchild of Hillary Clinton’s Russiagate hoax lawyer Marc Elias, congratulated Pima County for adopting vote centers.
Pima County, Arizona is making voting easier and more accessible by approving 129 vote centers.👏
Pima voters will be able to cast their ballot at any vote center in the county as opposed to precinct-specific polling locations.🗳https://t.co/LyI1GBtspG
Arizona allowed vote centers to be used rather than precincts beginning in 2011.
With less than a month to go before ballots hit mailboxes, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer issued an announcement on Thursday about their increased number of vote centers.
Maricopa County will have 212 vote centers for the August 2022 primary. These vote centers can be used by any registered county voter.
— Stephen Richer—Maricopa Cnty Recorder (prsnl acct) (@stephen_richer) June 2, 2022
Republican National Committee (RNC) leader Tyler Bowyer criticized the county’s decision.
This is awful. Vote centers are terrible for election integrity and should not be implemented without a way for the recorders office to reorganize all ballots physically at the tabulation center. It’s a legitimate issue for hand counting actual precincts. https://t.co/NhIJ7kOeQX
Prior to 2020, contentions with vote centers concerned the fact that there were less of them than there were polling places. Some voter rights watchdog organizations expressed concern that the reduced number of voting sites would pack an adverse, disproportionate impact on minority and low-income voters.
Mailed ballots will be sent out on July 6. A complete list of all vote center locations will be made available on the Maricopa County website approximately 45 days before the election according to the county’s election plan — at some point later this month.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
On Thursday, three GOP groups intervened in a lawsuit challenging Arizona’s new law requiring proof of citizenship in order to register to vote.
The Republican National Committee (RNC), National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), the Republican Party of Arizona (RPAZ), the Mohave County Republican Central Committee, and the Gila County Republican Committee intervened to challenge the plaintiffs: two activist organizations advocating for progressive policies, Mi Familia Vota and Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA).
In their motion to intervene, the GOP groups asserted that voter ID preserved election integrity.
“[T]he question for this Court is not whether Movants have an interest in maintaining an ‘unconstitutional’ law. The question is whether Movants have an interest in preventing a federal court from enjoining a valid law that increases voter confidence and promotes election integrity,” read their motion.
Both Mi Familia Vota and LUCHA received help from one of the top lawyers for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign: Russiagate hoax lawyer Marc Elias.
In a press release, GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel defended the new Arizona law as common-sense policy. She added that the law would hold Democrats accountable for their “underhanded election tactic” of rejecting voter ID.
“American elections should be decided by American citizens: full stop. When it comes to non-citizens voting, Democrats are trying to change the rules of the game because their radical ideas won’t win on an even playing field,” said McDaniel.
Democrats argued that requiring proof of citizenship in order to vote was unconstitutional and against federal law.
Today, @dougducey signed HB2492. The bill creates new, illegal barriers for voters and will lead to costly litigation.
The Governor had an opportunity to stand up for voters, election officials, and taxpayers. He failed.
— Secretary Katie Hobbs (@SecretaryHobbs) March 30, 2022
However, legal experts like former Arizona Supreme Court Justice Andrew Gould clarified that the Constitution never empowered non-citizens with the right to vote. Gould toldArizona Daily Independent that the Constitution actually excludes non-citizens.
“Of course, non-citizens have never had a right to vote under the Constitution, and so it is absurd to argue that HB2492 takes away a legal, constitutional right to vote from anyone,” said Gould. “Requiring proof of citizenship to vote is a neutral, reasonable, non-discriminatory restriction that operates to exclude one group: non-citizens.”
If the new law withstands legal challenges, it wouldn’t go into effect until 2023.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
With the help of Hillary Clinton’s Russiagate hoax lawyer Marc Elias, the Phoenix-based Latino activist organization Mi Familia Vota filed a lawsuit Thursday to challenge Arizona’s newly-enacted law requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration. Republican legislators and Governor Doug Ducey have reiterated that the legislation, HB2492, doesn’t apply retroactively to Arizonans who registered to vote without providing proof of citizenship before 2004, meaning those individuals won’t have to re-register to vote. There’s contention to that provision in question: opponents of the law argue that the new definition of a qualified voter requires all registered voters to have submitted proof of citizenship.
The complaint filed by Elias on behalf of Mi Familia Vota alleged that HB2492 was “confusing, discriminatory, and unconstitutional,” as well as “voter suppression,” claiming it would prevent those already registered without proof of citizenship from voting. The complaint also claimed that HB2492 shared the same faults as Proposition 200, a voter-approved initiative in 2004 that required county recorders to reject any application for registration that didn’t include satisfactory evidence of U.S. citizenship.
The Supreme Court (SCOTUS) struck down Proposition 200, ruling that it was a violation of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) which doesn’t require proof of citizenship when registering to vote. However, as Arizona Free Enterprise Deputy Director Greg Blackie explained during the State Senate hearing of the bill, this law was designed to fall within the bounds of SCOTUS precedent because the NVRA doesn’t prohibit states from denying registration if there’s proof that the applicant isn’t a citizen.
Mi Familia Vota’s complaint further insisted that the new law would undermine early mail-in voting, due to the fact that it would negate the ease of voting provided by that method. The complaint also claimed that around 200,000 registered voters would have to locate and present proof of citizenship in order to vote. For that claim, the complaint cited an opinion piece in the Arizona Republic, which didn’t make a definitive claim that those voters would be scrutinized.
“If you registered to vote in Arizona before 2004 and never provided proof that you’re a U.S. citizen — a number that includes close to 200,000 voters who got their driver’s licenses before October 1, 1996, in the days before proof of citizenship was required — you, too, could be suspect. In the eyes of the GOP-run Arizona legislature, that is,” stated the article. [emphasis added]
Setting aside the potential difficulties presented to voters, the complaint argued that Arizona had no compelling interest to justify requiring proof of citizenship of its voters. It claimed that the lack of proof of non-citizens who’d voted proved that point.
In terms of requested relief, the complaint asked the court to find the new law to be in violation of the rights to vote and due process as outlined in the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
The Democratic Party’s “go-to lawyer,” Marc Elias, promised he would sue Arizona over its election integrity laws passed recently by the state legislature if Governor Doug Ducey signs them into law. Elias was sued by former President Donald Trump on Thursday for his role in the Russigate hoax.
Elias has an expansive and varied portfolio of nearly 30 years among Democrats and corporate capitalists like the major Big Tech companies Facebook and Google. He played an integral role in Hillary Clinton’s Russiagate hoax. He hired intelligence firm Fusion-GPS for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Fusion-GPS then obtained the debunked dossier from former British spy Christopher Steele, dubbed the “Steele dossier,” who relied on a Russian analyst living in Virginia, Igor Danchenko, for the majority of its information.
My team has already sued Ohio and Arkansas this week.
For those of you following the new voter suppression law moving through the Arizona legislature today, take a look at #7…👀 https://t.co/QRxRuM7Rli
As AZ Free News reported earlier this month, Elias already submitted a motion to intervene in a case challenging the constitutionality of Arizona’s no-excuse mail-in voting system.
Elias has filed suit in numerous states over their new election integrity laws. He characterized Arizona’s most recent legislation passed, HB2492 requiring proof of citizenship in order to register to vote, as voter suppression and disenfranchisement. The bill mainly impacts those who register using federal forms, which don’t require proof of citizenship.
🚨ALERT: Arizona Legislature passes #HB2492, a bill requiring all voters to prove citizenship. The bill risks disenfranchisement for voters who registered before 2004 or used federal forms as they didn't have to submit proof of citizenship when registering.https://t.co/p70k5ydEX0
Other laws that Elias has watched under threat of lawsuit include: HB2237, HB2238, HB2170, and HB2243, which recently passed their Senate committees, and SB1058, which hasn’t been passed by the Senate yet.
