A Florida-based organization contends there are 1.2 million ineligible people on Arizona voter registration rolls.

In a new lawsuit, attorneys for Citizen AG say their calculations show that more than 1.6 million registered voters did not vote in the last two elections and also did not respond to notices that election officials are legally required to send to them to find out if they are still eligible. That, the lawsuit claims, means that they are dead or have moved.

Attorneys for the organization do acknowledge that 432,498 voters were removed following the 2022 midterm election.

That, however, still leaves them with the question of those remaining 1.2 million.

Strictly speaking, Citizen AG is asking U.S. District Court Judge Steven Logan, originally appointed by then-President Barack Obama, to force Secretary of State Adrian Fontes to respond to its demand for public records about what has been done to maintain the voter registration rolls.

That information, the organization’s lawyers say, is required to be made available under the National Voter Registration Act. But they told Logan that the only response they got from Fontes’ office is it has no records that were responsive to the group’s request.

But Citizen AG wants the judge to do more than order Fontes to provide the documents.

It wants Logan to order Fontes to immediate remove – or direct county election officials to remove – from the voter rolls anyone who did not respond to a confirmation notice and did not vote in either of the last two elections.

And if that’s not possible, they want those on the list to be allowed to vote only a “provisional ballot,” one that is set aside and subject to further legal challenge.

Logan has scheduled a hearing on the issue for Friday morning.

There was no immediate response from Fontes.

But it is likely that his attorneys would ask the judge to reject any request for immediate relief, if for no other reason than it comes at the last minute – and that Citizen AG could have raised these issues months ago.

And there’s another complicating factor.

The most recent figures show that more than two million Arizonans already have cast early ballots. And if they have been accepted – meaning that election officials have determined the signatures on the envelopes are valid – then the ballots themselves have been separated and there is no way to determine who cast any individual one of them.

At the heart of the lawsuit is the National Voter Registration Act.

“Arizona is required to maintain accurate and current voter registration lists by removing ineligible voters based on change-of-residence grounds,” the lawsuit states.

One way it does that is by sending notices, by forward-able mail, to those for whom there is some record of a change of address. If there is no response, a voter is placed on the “inactive” list.

These people can cast a ballot if they show up with proof of their residence and that the notice was a mistake.

But the law says if there is no response and that person does not cast a ballot in the next two election cycles, the names have to be removed entirely from the voter rolls.

Citizen AG made a request on Oct. 4 seeking voter history and information about the number of inactive voters to reactivate the registration by casting a vote in either the 2020 or 2022 elections after providing residency proof.

“As of the date of this filing, defendant has not produced any records responsive to Citizen AG’s request,” the lawsuit states. Instead, it got a response that the office “does not have any records responsive to your request.”

“The NVRA requires defendant to retain and make available for public inspections, for at least two years all records concerning voter list maintenance activities, such as removals, confirmations of voter eligibility, and updates to voter registration lists, as well as any records regarding the implementation of programs and activities conducted to ensure the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters,” the lawsuit states.

The attorneys concede it is possible that Fontes’ office is doing what federal law requires and is maintaining accurate voter registration lists. But they said the failure of Fontes to respond to the records request makes it impossible to know.

Little is known about Citizen AG.

No one from the organization returned messages seeking comment. And state Rep. Alexander Kolodin, who is serving as a local attorney for the Florida-based organization, said he could not comment on the litigation.

Its website says it launched “a citizen-led initiative where registered voters submit challenges to their respective county voter rolls.”

Citizen AG also has been involved in litigation in Georgia to remove voters from the rolls before this year’s election.

The website also says that Mike Yoder, its executive director, created the nonprofit “aimed at empowering citizens and safeguarding their freedoms against unlawful government overreach.” It also says that Yoder has a history of filing federal lawsuits to protect Americans “from losing their jobs due to vaccine mandates that conflicted with their religious beliefs.”