PHOENIX — Nearly 100,000 voters who have not filed citizenship documents may not be able to participate in Arizona state and local elections, a significant number for the battlefield state where the races were exciting.
Tuesday’s announcement about an error in state-run databases that reclassified voters comes just four days before county election officials are required to mail ballots to uniformed and out-of-state voters.
Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said the error had been fixed Tuesday morning, but the voter status of those caught in it had not. Fontes and Stephen Richer, the Republican clerk for Maricopa County, disagree over whether voters should have access to the full ballot or only be able to vote in federal races.
Richer filed a special case Tuesday asking the state Supreme Court to decide the issue.
“I believe these registrants have not met Arizona’s documentary evidence of citizenship law, and therefore can only cast a ‘FED ONLY’ ballot,” Richer wrote on the social media platform X.
Arizona is unique among states in that it requires voters to prove their citizenship in order to participate in local and state races. Those who have not done so, but have sworn to do so under penalty of law, are allowed to only participate in federal elections.
Arizona considers driver’s licenses issued after October 1996 as valid proof of citizenship. However, a system coding error marked more than 97,500 voters who obtained a driver’s license before 1996 — about 2.5 percent of all registered voters — as full voters, state officials said.
While the error between the state’s voter registration database and the Department of Motor Vehicles will not affect the presidential election, that number of voters could prove decisive in tight races in the state Legislature, where Republicans hold slim majorities in both chambers.
It could also have implications for voting measures, including the constitutional right to abortion And the criminalization of non-citizens for entering Arizona through Mexico at a location other than a port of entry.
Richer said his office discovered earlier this month that someone had been classified as both a noncitizen and a fully eligible voter — in violation of state law. The person registered to vote in 2022 but has not yet cast a ballot in Arizona’s election, Richer said.
According to the court filing, the discrepancy led to a larger systemic problem with the state databases.
Fontes said the approximately 97,500 voters who were redistricted because of the error — more than half in Maricopa County — are longtime Arizona residents and mostly Republicans who should be able to fully participate in the general election.
“This was discovered, not because someone voted illegally and not because someone tried to vote illegally, as far as we can tell,” Fontes said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon. “And this was basic maintenance of the voter rolls and it showed us that there is this problem.”
Richer said Fontes ignored state law by advising county election officials to allow affected voters to cast full ballots. Fontes said not allowing voters who believed they had met voting requirements access to full ballots raises equal protection and due process concerns.
“I am not prepared to disenfranchise so many voters by suddenly and with little notice restricting them to a federal ballot when none of them knew or were at fault for this issue,” Fontes wrote in a letter to county clerks.
Fontes said election officials will eventually contact voters, but not before the Supreme Court determines their status. He said his office would set up an electronic portal where voters can submit citizenship documents, if necessary.
Fontes and Richer agreed that voters would have to prove they are U.S. citizens to participate in state and local elections after the 2024 general election.