Voting rights groups file lawsuit challenging new Arizona election laws
Advocates claim legislation suppresses voting rights of people of color
PHOENIX, Ariz. (KYMA, KECY) - A coalition of voting rights groups filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging Arizona's newest election laws.
Mi Familia Vota, Arizona Coalition for Change, Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA), and Chispa Arizona argue the laws violate the First, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The groups claim two measures suppress the votes of people of color.
Senate Bill 1485, also know as the Voter Purge Law, makes changes to the way the state maintains its permanent early voting list (PEVL). The new law removes voters from the list if they fail to cast ballots in two consecutive elections. The state does notify them before purging their names from the list. Advocates say the measure will remove 150,000 names from the PEVL. They claim most of those voters will be people of color.
The lawsuit also targets Senate Bill 1003, the Cure Period Law. It gives a voter until 7pm on Election Day to submit a signature if they fail to sign a mail-in ballot. Voting rights groups point out, the law gives voters up to five-days after an election to rectify issues with mismatched signatures
The complaint filed Tuesday alleges:
“Neither law responds to any genuine shortcoming in Arizona’s election system or furthers any valid state interest. The laws will have a severe and disproportionate impact on voters of color in Arizona, especially Native American, Latino, and Black voters...
It is no coincidence that the Arizona legislature enacted these changes only after an election in which (1) for the first time in recent memory, the presidential candidate preferred by Arizona voters of color won; and (2) voters of color increasingly used early voting—the target of the new laws—to help elect their candidate of choice.”
- Excerpt from Voting Rights lawsuit
“The right to vote of hundreds of thousands of Black, Brown, and Indigenous voters in Arizona is on the line in this case,” said Carolina Rodriguez-Greer, the Arizona State Director for Mi Familia Vota. “SB 1485 and SB 1003 will severely burden voters of color and these bills were designed with the intent to disenfranchise such voters. Voter suppression has no place in a democracy. The courts must now protect us from this attack on our most fundamental right.”
The suit was filed on the same day Republican lawmakers announced plans for a ballot measure seeking to add a voter-identification requirement for mail-in ballots.
