In Mussi v. Fontes, the chair of the Arizona Republican Party and others sued Arizona Secretary of the State Adrian Fontes alleging that the state’s voter registration rates exceed national voter registration rates, and therefore the secretary must purge the rolls more aggressively. The Brennan Center, along with cocounsel Ballard Spahr LLP, filed an amicus brief in support of the secretary of state’s motion to dismiss.
The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) was enacted to increase voter participation, ensure the accuracy of voter rolls, and address a history of overly aggressive voter purge systems. Under the NVRA, election administrators are required to conduct reasonable voter list maintenance that includes safeguards to ensure eligible voters are not accidentally removed from the rolls.
Voter list maintenance — when done responsibly — is appropriate and necessary for election administration. But removing voters without adequate protections violates federal law and can lead to disenfranchisement. When voter purges are rushed, based on unreliable data, or done without essential precautions or enough public notice, voters bear the greatest burden — potentially arriving at the polls only to discover they have been removed from the rolls and are unable to cast an ordinary ballot.
On June 3, 2024, the head of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, the chair of the Arizona GOP, and a voter filed a complaint alleging that Arizona maintains voter registrants at a higher rate than national averages, and in some counties, higher than the state’s voting-eligible population. The plaintiffs claim that the discrepancies show that the secretary of state is failing to conduct reasonable list maintenance as required by the NVRA. This suit is yet another in a multi-year national effort by activist groups using exaggerated claims to pressure election officials to purge voter rolls beyond what federal law requires or permits.
The Arizona secretary of state filed a motion to dismiss the case on June 25, 2024, arguing that the plaintiffs lack standing to bring their suit and that the claims are based on distorted data analysis, rendering their claims implausible.
On July 2, 2024, the Brennan Center and cocounsel Ballard Spahr LLP filed an amicus brief in support of the secretary of state’s motion to dismiss. The brief first argues that Arizona has a robust list maintenance system that complies with the NVRA and that the plaintiff’s complaint is based on recycled and unreliable methodology that has previously been discredited by courts. By relying on such unsound data analysis to ask the court for more aggressive purges, the brief argues, the plaintiffs are turning the pro-voter purpose of the NVRA on its head and risking indiscriminate disenfranchisement of eligible voters.
Second, the brief argues that this lawsuit is a part of a broader movement to weaponize the judicial process to sow doubt about the 2024 election. This challenge to Arizona’s election administration is one of at least a dozen suits that have been filed this election season. As the brief argues, allowing this case to move forward would provide fodder to a broader post-2020 effort to disrupt democratic systems and undermine confidence in elections. Such suits risk heightened harassment and violence against election officials, and responding to such baseless suits requires time and resources from election administrators already stretched thin as they prepare for the 2024 election.
Case Documents
