Arizona law requires county recorders to do monthly voter list maintenance and purge the names of foreign citizens from voter rolls. Yet, as of April, there were more than 35,000 registered voters in the state who failed to provide proof of citizenship and were not entitled to vote in state and local races, only federal. In July, AFL sent letters to election officials in all Arizona counties to fulfill their obligations to maintain clean voter rolls and ensure that noncitizens' names do not appear, warning them of legal action for noncompliance. AFL filed a lawsuit on Aug. 5 against the Maricopa County Recorder for failing to comply with the demand. Maricopa County, the state’s largest county, moved the case to federal court, which AFL says is consistent with a pattern of using procedural maneuvers to delay election cases from being heard on the merits. AFL says this move backfired, because as Arizona state courts allow for just one county at a time to face legal action in a case like this, federal court rules allow plaintiffs to sue multiple counties simultaneously. And now that the case is in federal court, AFL has added 14 other counties to the lawsuit in a bid to compel each county to fulfill its legal obligation to remove noncitizens from voter rolls. “We are taking emergency action to secure our elections. In addition to Maricopa, we are now suing 14 additional counties in Arizona for refusing to remove illegal aliens and non-citizens from their voter rolls,” AFL President Stephen Miller said in a statement. “America First Legal will do everything in its power to fight mass illegal alien voting and foreign interference in our democracy.” The amended lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona explains that both federal law and state law require counties to ensure that voters who are not eligible to vote are removed from voter rolls. “Because it is illegal for any foreign national to register to vote, or to vote, there is no reason for a foreign national to be on voter rolls in this state,” the lawsuit says. “This lawsuit seeks to restore public trust in our State’s electoral system by holding the Defendants accountable for their failures and to ensure that the list maintenance required by the law — and common sense — is performed,” the suit states.America First Legal (AFL) is suing all 15 counties in Arizona over failure to remove illegal aliens from voter rolls.
