In black eye for Katie Hobbs, Arizona mails thousands of incorrect ballots

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat now running for governor, is acknowledging that as many as 6,000 voters got a mail ballot with only federal races.

Hobbs, whose campaign is staked largely on defending the integrity of the 2020 elections, said Tuesday the mistake was the result of a database glitch.

She also said affected voters will receive the correct ballot shortly.

Kari Lake, the Arizona GOP gubernatorial nominee, who has made concerns about voting irregularities and fraud a centerpiece of her campaign, has called on Hobbs to step aside from overseeing the midterms while she’s on the ballot.

The Hobbs-Lake race is essentially deadlocked, according to the most recent RealClearPolitics.com polls average. 

Hobbs also said Tuesday that the problem impacted less than a quarter of 1% of voters and that the database problem has been corrected.

When residents of Arizona register to vote or update their registration, an election system accesses their driver’s license records to verify whether they have proof of citizenship. Those without documentation are ineligible to vote in state elections and registered as "federal only" voters, according to the Associated Press. 

A spokeswoman for the secretary of state office said the driver’s license query failed to properly verify the citizenship for some people, resulting in them being improperly registered as the federal-only voters, the wire service also reports.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that Arizona cannot require documentary proof of citizenship for people to vote in national elections. In response, the state created two classes of voters – one for those who can vote in all races and another for those who can vote only in federal elections.