Arizona's guidance for election workers violates Americans' First Amendment right to free speech and may disenfranchise voters, a lawsuit filed Wednesday alleges.
Brought against Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, Gov. Katie Hobbs, and Attorney General Kris Mayes in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, the suit challenges provisions included in the latest iteration of the Election Procedures Manual, which provides guidance for election officials relating to mail ballots, voter registration, and other election-related matters.
State law requires the manual to be issued by the secretary of state on Dec. 31 of every odd-numbered year and reviewed by Arizona's governor and attorney general before finalization.
Plaintiffs argue this provision "Mandates the complete disenfranchisement of every voter in that county" and "Does so even where the voters in that county themselves are entirely faultless and have complied with all requirements for exercising their constitutional right to vote."
Plaintiffs claim Fontes devised the provision to deter what happened during the state's 2022 midterms, in which the two Republican members of the Cochise County Board of Supervisors delayed certifying the locality's election results following voters' complaints about Maricopa County's disastrous Election Day administration.
The second provision challenged in the lawsuit is a "Speech restriction," which, as plaintiffs describe, "Purports to criminalize 'any activity' taken 'with the intent or effect of threatening, harassing, intimidating or coercing voters.'" The guideline "Broadens the scope of conduct criminally prohibited under" state law and, plaintiffs allege, could be used to target Arizonans' First Amendment right to free speech.
"The EPM does not provide any guidance as to how to apply its indeterminate terms and thus cannot be justified if the Speech Restriction were limited purely to the non-public forums of voting locations."
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