As many as four Arizona counties have more registered voters on their rolls than eligible citizens as the state fails to conduct voter list maintenance in compliance with federal law, a lawsuit filed by the Arizona Free Enterprise Club alleges.
The Arizona Free Enterprise Club, along with Arizona GOP Chair Gina Swoboda and Steven Gaynor, a registered voter, allege in a suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona that Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes has failed to comply with Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). The NVRA requires that states conduct list maintenance to remove ineligible voters.
Fontes told the state legislature that a federally-required list maintenance program is “in development,” according to the suit. Fontes’ comment, plaintiffs allege, indicates “that the general maintenance program required of states by the NVRA does not currently exist in Arizona.”
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Because of the state’s failure, according to the suit, as many as four counties — Apache, La Paz, Navajo, and Santa Cruz — have more registered voters than eligible citizens. The plaintiffs compared the total number of registrants on each county’s voter rolls to the Citizen Voting Age Population (CVAP) reported by the U.S. Census Bureau, and concluded that Apache County had a 117 percent registration rate, while Santa Cruz County had a registration rate of more than 111 percent. La Paz and Navajo
