America First Legal Expands Landmark Election Integrity Case to Yavapai County After Maricopa County Tried to ‘Sabotage’ It

America First Legal (AFL) “expanded a landmark Arizona election integrity case” last week, suing Yavapai County.

AFL said in a press release that it withdrew the initial election integrity complaint against Maricopa County election officials due to “Maricopa County’s schemes to sabotage the case,” re-filing it in Yavapai County. The new lawsuit, which is similar to the initial one, added an additional allegation, that during the 2022 elections, at least one voting center in Yavapai County had printer malfunctions that caused long lines.

James Rogers, America First Legal Senior Counsel, said in a statement, “What is Maricopa County’s response to the legitimate concerns of its citizens? Frivolous procedural motions trying to delay the case and ensure it is not heard on its merits. This voluntary dismissal is not the end of this case, but just the beginning.”

The statement also included this commentary from AFL, “The landmark election integrity that America First Legal filed against Maricopa County is not dead. It is alive and will continue where it should be: outside of Maricopa County.”

Partisan attorneys tried to spin the developments as a defeat for AFL. Marc Elias, the progressive attorney known for suing election officials, including in Arizona, posted on X, “BREAKING: Sixteen days after it filed the case and after we intervened to defend the law, Stephen Miller’s right-wing legal group dismisses its lawsuit challenging Maricopa County, AZ voting rules. A victory for democracy and the voters of Arizona!”

Arizona’s Law, which is run by a couple of attorneys, including progressive activist Tom Ryan, responded to Elias, “To be clear, the case was dismissed because Maricopa County – represented by their in-house counsel and @SWLawNews – were about to file a Motion to Dismiss the entire case because @America1stLegal had sued the wrong folks. (And ask for fees and/or sanctions).”

After AFL filed its Notice of Dismissal on February 22 in the first case, the Maricopa County defendants tried to stop the dismissal since they wanted to “needlessly delay the case through abusive and frivolous motions,” AFL asserted.

On February 22, AFL filed a Response in Opposition to Maricopa County defendants’ Motion for Leave to File Response to Plaintiffs’ Notice of Dismissal. It stated that since AFL had already voluntarily dismissed the Maricopa County lawsuit, and case law and court rules made it clear there were no grounds to oppose it, there was no need for the court to grant the defendants’ motion.

The response explained why AFL voluntarily dismissed the case and was re-filing it in another county. AFL cited A.R.S. 12-408(B) as the authority to do so, which states, “In a civil action pending in the superior court in a county where the county is a party, the opposite party is entitled to a change of venue to some other county without making an affidavit therefor.”

AFL stated, “The Arizona legislature created this right because it recognized the inherent power imbalance when a party is forced to litigate against a county on that county’s home turf.”

AFL explained, “Yet, despite the clear statutory authority for the Plaintiffs to change venue as of right, the Maricopa County Defendants have worked to delay adjudication of the merits of the Plaintiffs’ case through abusive, and unsupported, motion practice. It is because of the Maricopa County Defendants’ abuse of the judicial process that Plaintiffs sought to voluntarily dismiss this case.”

The AFL added, “Critically, neither the Maricopa County Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss (MTD) nor the Motion for Leave is supported by the facts or law. They were seemingly designed to delay adjudication in what appears to be a brazen attempt to run out the clock before the 2024 election with the likely intent to moot the Plaintiffs’ claims. … The Plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed this case precisely because it became clear after the Maricopa County Defendants filed its frivolous MTD that the Maricopa County Defendants were so scared of litigating this case on the merits outside of its home turf that it would stop at nothing to bog this case down in months of procedural maneuvers to prevent transfer.”

AFL said the defendants’ MTD was frivolous because they did not object to being named as defendants in similar cases.

“Even though a lawsuit challenging how Maricopa County conducts elections needs to include Maricopa County as a defendant, Maricopa County has now been trying to argue the opposite of what it has always admitted before,” AFL stated. “Unbelievably, it is trying to argue that a case about how the county manages elections should not include the county as a party. Maricopa County is trying to play procedural tricks to deprive our clients of their right to have their case heard outside the county.”

The Maricopa County defendants asked the court to dismiss the case with prejudice so AFL would not be able to re-file and accused AFL of “forum shopping.”

AFL followed up by filing a proposed reply, going over why the defendants’ interpretation of Rule 41(a)(1) of the Rules of Civil Procedure, which claimed that the plaintiffs could not dismiss the complaint of their own volition, was incorrect. “If this Court were to adopt the Maricopa Defendants’ interpretation, it would be the first court in Arizona to interpret Rule 41 in this way, and it would be doing so directly contrary to controlling Court of Appeals precedent,” the pleading said.

Judge Jay Adleman agreed with AFL, noting that it was standard procedure in that situation to dismiss it without prejudice, as AFL requested.

“Arizona law indicates that a plaintiff may voluntarily dismiss an action as a matter of right (without a court order) before the defendant serves an answer or files a motion for summary judgment,” he said in his Minute Entry. “In doing so, the first dismissal is without prejudice.”

On February 16, AFL added Coconino County as a defendant. On February 23, AFL filed a new complaint in Yavapai County. The new information about the long lines in Yavapai County was obtained after a long wait for the records from the secretary of state. Although AFL filed a public records request for it shortly after the 2022 election, the secretary of state did not respond until AFL sued in February.

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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News NetworkFollow Rachel on X / Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Voting Line” by Eliza Brown. CC BY-NC 2.0.

 

 

 

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