Arizona law requiring voter registration in one county injures poor, minority voters: Lawsuit

A liberal legal group is challenging Arizona’s new election law, which bars voters from being registered in multiple locations and outlaws forwarding a mail-in ballot to someone who lives out of state.

The Elias Law Group says poor and minority voters will suffer from the law.

It filed a 30-page complaint in federal court this month challenging Arizona’s Senate Bill 1260, which requires a county recorder to cancel a voter registration if the voter re-registers in another county. The law also makes it a crime to aid a voter who is registered in a different state.

Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, signed the law in June.

The lawsuit claims that the requirements damage the voting ability of poor, minority, retired and young people because they change residences more often than others.

“Certain groups of voters are likely to be more severely burdened, including those who tend to be more residentially transient, such as younger voters, poorer voters, and non-white voters, as well as older voters who move to Arizona to retire,” the lawsuit reads.

The lawsuit claims that the law violates constitutional rights, that a parent could get into legal trouble for forwarding a mail-in ballot to a child who resides out of state and that an individual could face criminal charges if they simply forgot to cancel their registration after moving.

“The bill also conscripts private citizens to help the state purge their neighbors from the voter rolls, opening the door to nefarious activities from individuals and organizations seeking to suppress voters. This bill must be struck down to preserve the voting rights of Arizona voters,” said Aria Branch, a partner at Elias Law Group.

Arizona was one of a few swing states at the center of the 2020 election squabble with pro-Trump advocates claiming election fraud through mail-in voting. The claims of election fraud, though, have been dismissed in several lawsuits brought by pro-Trump lawyers, and an audit did not produce proof of substantial irregularities.

After the record turnout of mail-in voting in 2020, Arizona lawmakers have passed a handful of laws aimed at regulating elections. One of the laws requires proof of citizenship to vote. The Biden Justice Department challenged that requirement in a lawsuit last month.

Brittni Thomason, spokesperson for the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, defended the law, saying it is “common sense” for election integrity.

“There is no reason we cannot maximize both voter participation and confidence in our elections. It is a misconception to believe that we must choose between the two. SB 1260 is a common sense election integrity measure, and we will defend it all the way to the Supreme Court, as we have every time activists have challenged laws that safeguard our elections,” she said.