Right-Wing Legal Group Files Lawsuits in Three States Targeting Voter Rolls
Citizen_AG, a nascent right-wing legal group, filed three lawsuits in three battleground states this week targeting voter rolls. Two of the lawsuits — in Arizona and Pennsylvania — challenge the maintenance of the state’s voter rolls, while a lawsuit filed in Wisconsin challenges the state’s use of the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) for improving accuracy of its voter rolls and identifying eligible unregistered voters.
Prior to this week, Citizen_AG hadn’t filed any voting-related lawsuits.
The Wisconsin lawsuit, filed Monday, alleges that ERIC and the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR) used data from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) to obtain driving records from millions of Wisconsin residents to identify eligible unregistered voters. Wisconsin has been a member of ERIC since 2016. This practice, the lawsuit argues, violates the state’s Driver’s Privacy and Protection Act (DPPA).
Citizen_AG’s Pennsylvania lawsuit, filed Tuesday, alleges that the state’s voter rolls include more than 277,000 registrants who might not be eligible to vote. Under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), states are required to keep accurate voter registration rolls by contacting voters who may no longer be eligible to vote in the state because of residency. If a voter doesn’t respond to a state’s confirmation notice, then they are marked as “inactive” for two federal election cycles before they’re removed from the state’s voter rolls.
Citizen_AG claims that the state is violating Section 8 of the NVRA for not removing the registrants who never responded to confirmation notices sent in the 2020 election. The lawsuit also claims that Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt (R) failed to provide Citizen_AG with voter roll records within 30 days of their request, which violates the NVRA’s Public Disclosure Provision. In their lawsuit, the group asked the court to ban Pennsylvania from allowing any inactive registrants from voting in the November general election and for the state to immediately provide voter roll records.
The group filed a similar lawsuit in Arizona on Wednesday that alleges there are 1.2 million potential inactive voters who never responded to confirmation notices and are listed as active on the state’s voter rolls. They also allege that Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) never responded to the group’s request for voter roll records. Their lawsuit also asks the court to order Fontes to provide voter roll records and ensure that ineligible voters can’t vote in the November general election.
Citizen_AG is the self-described “registered fictitious name for 1789 Foundation Inc.,” a right-wing nonprofit legal group founded by attorney Mike Yoder. Yoder describes himself as a “constitutional attorney” who’s “known for his aggressive litigation style, particularly against the Biden Administration.” Through his law firm, Yoder Dreher Pearson LLP, Yoder claims to have filed more than 100 federal lawsuits related to vaccine mandates and taken on White House officials and “every Secretary in the Biden Administration Cabinet,” along with state Democratic officials like Mayors Eric Adams and Muriel Bowser and Governors Gavin Newsom, J.B. Pritzker and Kathy Hochul.
Yoder said he founded Citizen_AG in 2022 with the aim of “empowering citizens and safeguarding their freedoms against unlawful mandates and government overreach.”
Learn more about the Arizona lawsuit here.
Learn more about the Pennsylvania lawsuit here.
Learn more about the Wisconsin lawsuit here.
This article was updated on Oct. 31 to reflect that Wisconsin is still a member of ERIC.