Attorneys for Scot Mussi, the president of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, sent Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (pictured above) a letter earlier this month threatening litigation if Fontes did not clean up the state’s voter rolls. Attorneys Jason Torchinsky and Dallin Holt of Holtzman Vogel said they “determined that at least four counties have more registered voters than adult citizens over the age of 18.”
Apache County had the most number of voter registrations, with 117.4 percent, and Maricopa County was close to 100 percent with 97.8 percent.
The attorneys warned, “This letter provides statutory notice that Scot Mussi, acting as a registered Arizona voter with a substantial interest in secure elections, will bring a lawsuit against you and, if appropriate, against the counties named in this letter, if you fail to take specific actions to correct these violations of Section 8 within the 90-day timeframe specified in federal law.” In anticipation of the litigation, the letter asked Fontes and the 14 counties to “take steps to preserve documents.”
The letter said they compared “publicly available voter registration records with the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2017-2021 American Community Survey of citizen voting age population,” and found
“14 counties in violation of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which requires states to maintain accurate and updated voter registration records.” Nationwide, “[a]ccording to the U.S. Census Bureau, only 72.7 percent of the citizen voting-age population was registered nationwide in the November 2020 election,” the letter stated.
The increase in Arizona’s voter rolls rose sharply after the last two general elections. “The U.S. Census Bureau further reported that Arizona’s statewide voter registration rates for the 2020 and 2018 elections were 76.4 percent and 68.6 percent of the citizen voting-age population, respectively,” the letter said. The increases were “8 to 50 percentage points” higher than previous national numbers and “4 to 48 percentage points” higher than previous state numbers.
