Voting Rights Organizations File Lawsuit Against Arizona Secretary Of State
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Several voting rights organizations have filed a lawsuit against Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan. This comes nine months after Reagan was warned that she may be violating federal voting rights.
Under the National Voter Registration Act, if voters update their address through the motor vehicle division — that information should be used to automatically update their voter registration address.
Ceridwen Cherry is an attorney with the voting rights project at the ACLU. She said Reagan is not complying with that law.
“Although the MVD is collecting address update information from voters and providing that information to the secretary of state, the secretary of state is not using it to automatically update voter registration addresses,” Cherry said.
As a result, hundreds of thousands of Arizonans might not have updated voter registration addresses. Reagan has promised updates by 2019. She said doing it now would only confuse voters.
“Imagine right before an election, you’ve got half a million people getting letters that is confusing them as to the address of their voter registration," Reagan said. "It’s just not a good idea. We try to make decisions on lawsuits about whether we’re going to settle something or deny something based on what’s best for the voters.”
Reagan plans to ask for the case to be dismissed, as her office is already working to solve the problem.
