Arizona admits that nearly 100,000 non-citizen 'voters' wrongly listed on voter rolls amid lawsuit

Arizona officials admitted to finding nearly 100,000 voters who had not provided proof of U.S. citizenship but still had full voting privileges as the state is facing a lawsuit for not removing non-citizens from its voter rolls.

Close to 100,000 voters are incorrectly registered in Arizona as proving their U.S. citizenship, with one green card holder found registered with full voting privileges. The 20-year-old error that caused this was discovered as the state is being sued for not searching for and removing non-citizens from its voter registration lists.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) explained Tuesday that there was an error in state systems that labeled the roughly 97,000 voters as providing documented proof of U.S. citizenship, Votebeat reported.

"Motor Voter" crashes

The Motor Vehicle Division (MVD) provides the state’s voter registration system with driver’s license information, and the error occurred in that process. Affected voters had first obtained Arizona driver’s licenses before October 1996 and were issued duplicate replacements before registering to vote after 2004, 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.

The error has occurred for about 20 years and over four administrations, he noted.

Counties are scheduled to send out military and overseas voter ballots on Thursday.

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs’ (D) office explained Tuesday that the state’s Access Voter Information Database (AVID) “was programmed to query the duplicate issuance date” of driver's licenses “and would not alert the county that the license was originally issued before 10/1/1996.”

Driver’s licenses “issued after October 1, 1996 can be valid [documentary proof of citizenship],” the governor’s office noted.

"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 posted on his X account 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."

Proof of citizenship

"Moving forward (2025 onward), everyone agrees we need [documented proof of citizenship] for those voters for them to vote a full ballot," he explained. "But the Secretary and I have different opinions on what the law requires for the November 5, 2024 General Election. It is my position that these registrants have not satisfied Arizona's documented proof of citizenship law, and therefore can only vote a 'FED ONLY' ballot. The Secretary argues that it is too close to the election to implement such a change and that it would be unduly burdensome on voters and deprive them of their voting rights. That is why we are going to the courts. To get a clear answer."

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.

Since late 2004, state law requires residents registering to vote in the state to provide proof of U.S. citizenship.  

However, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that Arizona must accept U.S. voter registration forms because of federal requirements under the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, the state allows residents registering to vote who don't provide proof of citizenship to receive ballots for federal races only.

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.

Richer told Just the News on Tuesday, “I am proud of my team’s hard work day in and day out to process eligible voter registration forms and clean our voter rolls. It’s thanks to their expertise and diligence that we discovered the state’s data translation inconsistencies – an issue that dates back years and spans many administrations. I immediately alerted the Governor’s Office and Secretary of State, and they acted quickly and efficiently to resolve the issue in MVD’s database.”

“Now we need clarification on how to proceed with the voters whose registration have been impacted,” he continued. “That’s why I filed a lawsuit with the Arizona Supreme Court seeking clarification on whether the law requires that the affected voters submit documented proof of citizenship in order to vote a full ballot for the November 2024 election. I have maintained close communication with Secretary Fontes and Governor Hobbs throughout the preparation and filing of the lawsuit. The General Election is less than two months away – and I look forward to getting answers for voters in Maricopa County and across the state.”

Regarding the voter roll issue, Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., told the “John Solomon Reports” podcast Tuesday that he asked Arizona GOP Chair Gina Swoboda a couple weeks ago “what it was looking like, and she did say that these were issues that we were going to be dealing with. And I think it's why President Trump has said that, you know, we've got to make this too big to rig, because we've known for a long time that, you know, this was going to be, you know, part of the situation.”

The voter roll error was found about two weeks after America First Legal (AFL) filed an amended lawsuit against all 15 of Arizona's counties for allegedly failing to remove non-citizens from their voter rolls.

With regard to the 97,000 incorrectly listed voters, AFL Senior Counsel James Rogers told Just the News on Tuesday in a statement, "This situation emphasizes the importance of our lawsuit against Arizona's 15 county recorders, which we filed on behalf of our clients EZAZ.org and Yvonne Cahill. Arizona law requires that voters must provide documentary proof of citizenship to vote in state and local elections."

"Detractors of our lawsuit continually claim that current voter list maintenance efforts are sufficient and that there is no evidence foreign citizens have been registering to vote in Arizona," Rogers later added. "Today's revelation proves both of these assertions wrong. Today, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes was forced to admit that over 97,000 individuals have been incorrectly registered to vote in state and local elections, even though these individuals never provided proof of citizenship.

Problem discovered by accident

"This problem was only discovered when Maricopa County stumbled upon a foreign citizen who had been registered to vote for years (presumably since before 1996, which is the year when Arizona law changed to require proof of lawful immigration status to get a driver's license)," he continued. "We now have definitive confirmation that foreign citizens are registered to vote in Arizona and that, for years, election officials around the state failed to notice major mistakes in their voter rolls--over 97,000 mistakes, to be precise. This represents a massive failure in the voter list maintenance efforts of Arizona's election officials.

"America First Legal reiterates its invitation to Arizona's county recorders to beef up their efforts. The first step is to send the names of all voters who haven't yet provided proof of citizenship to DHS for confirmation of their immigration status."

AFL's lawsuit, filed on behalf of Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona and a registered voter who is a naturalized citizen, follows AFL's complaint against Maricopa County last month.

The case against Maricopa County began after AFL sent letters to election officials in all 15 counties in July, demanding that they prevent non-citizens from voting and threatening legal action if they did not.

AFL argues that two federal laws "allow State and local officials to obtain information about the citizenship or immigration status of any individual for any lawful purpose," but that county officials have not used them for voter roll maintenance.

As of July 1, there are 42,301 voters without proof of citizenship on Arizona's voter rolls, which increased from 35,273 as of April 1, the lawsuit states, citing information from the Arizona secretary of state's office.