We’re Suing for Transparency in Arizona Elections

“We made some horrendous mistakes.” Those are the words of Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell, at a public hearing last month where citizens voiced outrage about being shut out of the Arizona primary­.

As the entire nation now knows, “horrendous mistakes” is actually a gross understatement. Thousands of voters in Maricopa County—which has a large Latino and Native population—waited in line for up to five hours, because Purcell had dramatically cut back on the number of polling places. (Something she would probably not have been able to do if the full Voting Rights Act was still in place.)

And it got worse. Some registered Democrats arrived to participate in the closed primary, only to be told that they’d been listed as Independents, and therefore couldn’t vote. Other voters reported being told they weren’t registered at all, or that they had—somehow—already voted. Many polling places ran out of ballots. Thousands of provisional ballots still haven’t been counted. Secretary of State Michele Reagan has now admitted that election fraud took place.

It was an election debacle of epic proportions, and a frightening harbinger of what might happen when Arizonans go to vote in the General Election.

But it was also not a complete surprise: Arizona’s track record on elections leaves a lot to be desired, and the state’s election officials always seem to have a lot to answer for. Project Vote, in fact, has been suing Arizona more or less non-stop, in one form or another, for more than a decade.

We sent a pre-litigation notice letter to Arizona in 2008, informing them that they were violating the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) by failing to properly provide voter registration services through public assistance agencies. The Department of Justice agreed with us, and forced Arizona into a settlement agreement later that year.

We sued Arizona and went all the way to the Supreme Court over Proposition 200, the discriminatory proof-of-citizenship law that disenfranchised tens of thousands of eligible—mostly Latino—voters.

Then we fought a legal battle with Arizona to the U.S. Court of Appeals—and they tried to take us all the way to the Supreme Court—to stop them from forcing these same discriminatory proof-of-citizenship requirements onto the federal voter registration form.

And—just weeks ago—we filed suit against the Election Assistance Commission for letting Kansas and other states do the same thing.

Given all of this, do you trust Arizona election officials to manage voter registration lists in secret?

No, neither do we. Which is one reason we’re now suing the state again, this time to make sure their voter registration records are available to the public as required by the NVRA.

Transparency of such records is guaranteed by the NVRA in order to protect the integrity of elections. But not all states comply, and many states get around the issue by charging prohibitively expensive fees to anyone wanting to review the voting lists or registration records. Arizona is one of these states, having made it all but impossible for watchdog groups like Project Vote to monitor the integrity of Arizona’s voter rolls.

(Following the 2012 election, Project Vote submitted a records request to Maricopa County. Ms. Purcell’s office informed us we could have the records—for about $50,000.)

This isn’t a well-known issue, but it’s an important one. Fair access to registration records is vital for ensuring that states are not using arbitrary or politically-motivated criteria for rejecting applicants or purging voters in secret. This is why the NVRA requires public disclosure of voter registration activities: to encourage accountability, to help identify and stop inaccurate voter list maintenance programs, and to educate voters on how to complete applications and remain on the rolls.

And, given the state’s track record, it’s particularly important in Arizona. The state cannot be allowed to make voter registration decisions from the shadows. Citizens and civil rights groups must be able to act as watchdogs over election officials, and guard citizens against capricious, negligent, or discriminatory practices that threaten to rob them of their votes.

That’s why Project Vote is suing Secretary of State Reagan, Maricopa’s recorder Purcell, and Pima’s recorder F. Ann Rodriguez, to make sure their voter registration activities are as open and transparent as federal law requires.

After the disaster of the primary, we can see why Arizona’s election officials might not want to operate in the open. But we can’t allow them to continue making bad decisions from the darkness.

Call us crazy, but—in Arizona, especially—we think decisions about the rights of American citizens to vote should all be made in the light of day.