This lawsuit challenged the “cure period” in Arizona’s Elections Procedures Manual that gave absentee voters with signature discrepancies on their mail-in ballots a 3-5 day window to cure or verify their signature. Plaintiffs assert in their complaint that the insufficiency of this cure period would result in the disenfranchisement of a large number of Arizona voters in the 2020 Election by mass rejection of legally cast but formally deficient ballots. The Arizona District Court held that the cure period “impose[d] minimal but unjustifiable burdens on the right to vote,” and granted Plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary and permanent injunction extending the deadline for voters to cure their ballots. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit granted the defendant-appellants’ Emergency Motions for a Stay Pending Appeal, favoring the existing “minimal” Arizona election procedures over “sending the State scrambling to implement and to administer a new procedure for curing unsigned ballots at the eleventh hour.”
Arizona Democratic Party v. Hobbs
20-16759 | Active
Case Details
State
Filing Date
06/10/2020
Original Court
United States District Court for the District of Arizona
Current Court
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Documents
6-23-2020 – Motion to Intervene by Republican Nation Committee; Arizona Republican Party; and Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.
7-17-2020 – Answer of Republican National Committee, Arizona Republican Party and Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. to the Complaint
8-03-2020 – State’s Combined (1) Response to Plaintiffs’ Motion for a Preliminary Injunction and (2) Rule 12(C) Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings
8-03-2020 – State’s Motion for Leave to File a Combined (1) Response to Plaintiffs’ Motion for a Preliminary Injunction and (2) Rule 12(C) Motion for Judgement on the Pleadings
8-05-2020 – First Amended Response of the Coconino, Navajo, and Apache County Records to Plaintiffs’ Motion for Preliminary and Permanent Injunction
8-13-2020 – [Proposed] Order Granting Plaintiffs’ Motion to Strike Certain Opinions of Lonna Atkenson
8-17-2020 – State’s Response in Opposition to Plaintiffs’ Motion to Strike Certain Opinions of Lonna Atkeson
9-13-2020 – State’s Emergency Motion to Stay the Court’s September 10, 2020 Injunction Pending Appeal