A voter casts a ballot into a ballot box outside the Maricopa County Elections Department on August 2, 2022 in Phoenix. A filing error threatens to prevent nearly 100,000 people from voting in state and local races in Arizona in the upcoming election.
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Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Arizona election officials have discovered a flaw in the state’s voter registration system that could disqualify nearly 100,000 people from voting in state and local races just weeks before early ballots are due to hit mailboxes.
A state law that took effect in 2004 requires Arizona voters to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote in state and local elections, although individuals who do not provide proof can still register to vote for federal offices such as president and the United States Senate using a federal-only form.
Arizona’s voter registration system pulls information from the state’s driver’s license database as a method of proving citizenship, but the Maricopa County Clerk’s office discovered an error in that database that incorrectly showed some people had provided proof of citizenship when they applied for a driver’s license.
The issue affects only a tiny fraction of the roughly 4.1 million people registered to vote in Arizona — about 98,000 voters who had a voting license before Oct. 1, 1996, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said Tuesday.
“That was the day Arizona began requiring proof of legal residency in the United States to obtain a driver’s license,” Fontes said.
Maricopa County Clerk Stephen Richer, who oversees early voting and voter registration in the nation’s fourth-largest county, said his office discovered an error in that system when verifying the citizenship of a person who had a permit before 1996. The office discovered that the person was a legal permanent resident but not a citizen eligible to vote.
Fontes said there was no evidence that the person voted or attempted to vote.
But the discovery has left Arizona election officials in a difficult position, finding that tens of thousands of voters in every county in the state did not provide the necessary paperwork to fully vote under Arizona law.
However, Fontes said that does not mean those people are not eligible to vote.
“This was not detected because someone voted illegally and it was not because someone attempted to vote illegally,” he said. “As far as we know, this is basic voter registration maintenance.”
Now, Richer and Fontes are asking the Arizona Supreme Court to decide how to deal with voters affected by the revelation.
In an emergency petition filed in court, Richer, a Republican who has defended the county’s election system from critics like former President Donald Trump, argued that the 98,000 voters should only be allowed to vote in federal elections unless they provide proof of citizenship before Election Day.
“In my view, these registered individuals do not meet Arizona’s documented citizenship law and can therefore only vote ‘federal only,’” said Richer, who defeated in this year’s Republican primary by a Trump ally.
That “federal-only” status would allow them to vote in races like the presidential contest between Trump and Vice President Harris, but would prevent those voters from weighing in on the long list of proposed laws before Arizona voters this year, including a measure that would enshrine abortion rights in the state Constitution.
Fontes, a Democrat, called Richer’s filing a “friendly lawsuit,” saying his office had coordinated legal efforts to get a firm legal ruling on how to proceed.
But Fontes is taking a different stance than his Republican counterpart. He said his office plans to file a response with the court, asking it to allow the 98,000 affected voters to vote at all this year.
He said the election was too close to make changes like this to the voter rolls and he did not believe there was evidence that a large number of affected individuals were ineligible to vote.
“By the way, all of these voters meet the minimum criteria of taking the oath under penalty of perjury that they must do to vote in every election across the United States,” he said, adding that only Arizona requires additional proof of citizenship to vote.
He said he hopes to have a ruling by the end of the week when the state begins sending ballots to citizens and overseas military personnel. If not, he hopes to have a ruling before the state begins sending early mail-in ballots on Oct. 9.
Fontes acknowledged that publicizing problems with the voter registration system could add to already high tensions in Arizona and Maricopa County, where many unproven allegations of voter fraud arose after Trump lost to President Biden in 2020.
“This has fueled new conspiracy theories about this election, but those are as good as any other conspiracy theories,” Fontes said. “We have the facts. We’re putting them out there in a very transparent way.”
But Fontes said election officials had no choice but to go public.
“We are being open and transparent in bringing this up for discussion,” he said. “We are making sure that people understand that whether it is good, bad or indifferent, we will inform the public.”
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat and former secretary of state, said the Arizona Department of Transportation’s motor vehicle division has fixed the problem in its driver’s license database.
“After Judge Richer reported to me the erroneous voter registration records, my team identified and corrected an administrative error that began in 2004 and affected longtime residents who received their driver’s licenses before 1996,” Hobbs said in a statement.
Fontes said a fix will address the issue in the future.
