Nearly 100,000 individuals who failed to provide proof of U.S. citizenship still had full voting privileges in Arizona, state officials have admitted.
The state is facing a lawsuit for not removing the non-citizens from its voter rolls.
An error in state systems labeled the roughly 97,000 voters as providing documented proof of U.S. citizenship although they are non-citizens, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, said on Tuesday, Votebeat reported.
The Motor Vehicle Division (MVD) provides the state’s voter registration system with driver’s license information, and the error occurred in that process, Fontes said.
Fontes said the error was discovered by a Maricopa County worker who found a registered voter who hadn't provided proof of U.S. citizenship but was listed as a voter who could cast ballots in both federal and state elections.
The voter had a green card but never cast a ballot, Fontes said.
"My office discovered this issue last week, and we have been working with the Governor's Office, the Secretary's Office, the MVD, and the Attorney General to fix this moving forward," Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer claimed in a post to his X account on Tuesday.
Richer added that his office would sue the secretary of state’s office on Tuesday “regarding how to handle certain voters who need to provide documented proof of citizenship."
Since late 2004, Arizona law requires residents registering to vote in the state to provide proof of U.S. citizenship.
"Arizona is a state with the unusual situation of bifurcated elections, in which residents who provide proof of U.S. citizenship can vote in all elections while the others may vote only in federal elections, resulting in ballots cast by voters who haven’t proven their U.S. citizenship," Just the News noted.
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Former Arizona Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright told Just the News on Tuesday that the state’s Elections Procedures Manual (EPM) requires non-citizens to be identified by citizenship status on their driver’s licenses.“Each month the Secretary of State shall compare the statewide voter registration database to the driver license database maintained by [Arizona Department of Transportation],” the EPM reads. “The Secretary of State shall notify the appropriate County Recorder if a person who is registered to vote in that county has changed the person’s residence address or is not a United States citizen according to the driver license database.”
Wright explained that non-citizens lawfully residing in Arizona, such as the green card holder that Maricopa County found on its voter rolls, “shouldn’t be registered to vote” since they are labeled as non-citizens on their driver’s licenses.
“I think it makes more sense to submit the list to [the U.S. Department of Homeland Security] to compare to their person centric database” to confirm whether the 97,000 voters are U.S. citizens, Wright said.
She added that the Maricopa County recorder’s office could submit their voters’ information through the DHS list rather than sue the Arizona secretary of state to place them on the federal-only voter rolls.
Non-citizens “shouldn't be listed at all” on voter rolls, but citizens “should vote full ballot,” Wright said.
“It’s a half-measure” by placing the voters on a federal-only list, rather than confirming voters’ citizenship through DHS, she noted. The 97,000 voters have gone to the MVD, had their picture taken and given their signature, which is more information than what voters listed on the federal-only voter rolls provide, Wright said.
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