PHOENIX — A key election official in Arizona’s Maricopa County asked the state’s highest court Tuesday to prohibit nearly 100,000 longtime residents from voting in state and local races this fall after discovering that the state has no record of asking them for documents proving their U.S. citizenship.
At issue is a pool of voters who may not have submitted those documents. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) said the vast majority probably are longtime citizens who are eligible to vote in all races. He said more are registered as Republicans than as Democrats.
No matter how the court rules on the lawsuit brought by a Republican county official, the voters can provide the necessary documentation before Election Day and receive a full ballot.
While the group is a small fragment of the 4.1 million registered to vote in Arizona — and the issue will not affect federal races such as the ones for president and U.S. Senate — they could be decisive in elections for the statehouse and county offices or a ballot measure that will decide the extent of abortion access.
The lawsuit could also inject a new element of chaos into the presidential election in a battleground state just 1½ months before Election Day because of how it could be rhetorically used by former president Donald Trump and his allies. The lawsuit asks the Arizona Supreme Court to act with lightning speed in part because county election officials have planned to mail ballots to military and overseas voters on Thursday.
The litigation comes as Trump and other Republicans call for tighter rules to ensure noncitizens do not vote and as they spread false claims that those not eligible to participate cast large numbers of ballots. Voting by noncitizens is exceedingly rare, but critics have contended that more protections are needed to ensure that it does not happen.
The disclosure could also play into false Republican narratives that Democrats want to remake the nation by “importing” voters through the southern border — a frequent claim in Arizona, where border security and illegal immigration are top issues for GOP candidates and voters. Trump ally Laura Loomer seized on Tuesday’s disclosure, overlooking the nuances of the situation to declare on social media that “Arizona may have just illegally registered 100,000 illegal aliens to vote!”
State and county officials who have dealt with harassment and misinformation since Trump narrowly lost the 2020 presidential election said they worry that the situation could bring more threats and further erode confidence in a system under attack.
“I have always told the truth, and we uncovered what is a design system flaw,” said Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer (R), who helps oversee elections and filed the lawsuit. “That means that this pool of people who we thought had documented proof of citizenship on file with the motor vehicle division does not necessarily have documented proof of citizenship on file. So, therefore, we did what we thought was the only morally responsible thing, and we disclosed that.”
Under Arizona law, those who don’t provide documents proving their citizenship are allowed to vote only in federal races. While Arizona lawmakers originally wanted to require documentation to vote in any election, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that doing so for federal races violated the federal National Voter Registration Act. Voters who do not provide proof of citizenship receive ballots that show only federal contests and none at the state or local level.
In his lawsuit, Richer asked that the voters in question receive ballots that contain only federal races. Fontes, the secretary of state, wants the court to allow voters to receive full ballots that include federal and state races — just as they always have. On Tuesday, Fontes directed county recorders to make no changes to voters’ status until after the November election, according to the lawsuit and a letter to recorders from the secretary of state. Richer argued that the guidance was nonbinding and exceeded the authority of the secretary of state’s office.
Officials discovered this month that for two decades, a pool of voters had been marked as eligible to receive full ballots even though there is no record of them ever providing citizenship documents. About 98,000 of the state’s 4.1 million registered voters fall into that category, according to the secretary of state’s office.
The group consists of a narrow subset of voters who have lived in Arizona for decades. The voters received their initial driver’s licenses before 1996, got a replacement license sometime after that date and subsequently submitted a voter registration application, either because they moved or registered to vote for the first time.
When they received the replacement license, the state’s computer systems indicated to local election officials that they had provided citizenship documents even though there is no record that they had. The flaw has existed since 2004, when the state began requiring proof of citizenship for voting, officials said.
State and county election officials emphasized the need for a quick court decision: Under federal law, they need to send military and overseas ballots to voters this week. Early voting for other residents begins Oct. 9.
Fontes said his office is working with election officials in the state’s 15 counties to determine the best way to notify voters affected by the problem. He urged people to wait to see what the Arizona Supreme Court does before they show up to local offices with paperwork.
An employee in the recorder’s office discovered the problem during a routine check of voter rolls, officials said. The review flagged a man with a state driver’s license issued before 1996 who was registered in the system in 2022 as someone who had provided proof of citizenship. The man was ineligible to vote because he is a lawful permanent resident, not a citizen. Although registered, he had never voted, according to officials.
The county attorney’s office notified the secretary of state, setting off a review into why the state’s systems wrongly identified some voters as having proved their citizenship.
Fontes and other officials downplayed the possibility that a large portion of the 98,000 people are noncitizens.
“This happened because we’ve got policies that are being driven by conspiracy theories, and we have for a long time,” Fontes said at a news conference. “It has never been the case in the United States of America or in Arizona that noncitizen voting has been anything other than vanishingly rare.”
Richer, an attorney, has been a target of those who spread false election conspiracy theories, Republican operatives and candidates. Since taking office in 2021, he has vouched for the legitimacy of the state’s election system and has frequently blasted out social media posts that fact-check people who amplify election misinformation. That approach didn’t always sit well with his critics, who helped defeat him during the state’s summer primary election.
Republican state legislators passed a law in 2022 aimed at requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship to vote in all elections, not just state and local ones. The law has been challenged in court, and last month the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that for now Arizonans can register to vote for federal elections without providing proof of citizenship. The case could eventually return to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Gina Swoboda, the chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party, said she was thankful that officials went public with the problem.
“Obviously, this undermines confidence in the accuracy of the voter rolls, which is why there has been litigation around this issue,” said Swoboda, who had not been briefed on the problem as of midmorning Tuesday.
“The GOP is very grateful that the issue has been brought forward, and we look forward to working with our partners at the legislature and in the governor’s office and the secretary of state’s office to find a satisfactory resolution so that everyone who is eligible to cast a vote gets to vote.”
A spokesperson for the state Democratic Party did not respond to a request for comment.
Marley reported from Madison, Wis.
