(The Center Square) – Nearly 100,000 voters who haven’t submitted citizenship documents might be prevented from participating in Arizona’s state and local elections.
A coding error has allowed approximately 98,000 people in Maricopa County to vote in Arizona without proof of citizenship for decades. Gov. Katie Hobbs and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes announced on Tuesday that Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer discovered this error during “routine voter roll maintenance” and reported it on Sept. 7.
The error affects voters who received their driver’s licenses before Oct. 1, 1996. Before that date, individuals did not have to provide proof of residency to register to vote. They only had to swear affirmation under penalty of perjury, which is the status quo for the rest of the U.S.
However, if those individuals were reissued a driver’s license sometime after 2004 – when the Access Voter Information Database began malfunctioning in this way – the system did not require the Motor Vehicle Division to ask for proof of citizenship.
“MVD issues duplicate licenses as a replacement to an existing, active credential,” Hobbs said in a news release. “If an applicant was issued a license on or before 10/1/1996 but got a duplicate license after 10/1/1996, the operative issuance date in that person’s MVD record is updated to the date the duplicate was issued. The AVID system was programmed to query the duplicate issuance date and would not alert the county that the license was originally issued before 10/1/1996. As soon as I became aware of the problem, I directed MVD to work with the SOS to aggressively develop and implement a solution and, out of an abundance of caution, will be implementing an independent audit to ensure that MVD systems are functioning as necessary to support voter registration.”
Since federal law requires that residents only have to swear affirmation under oath, Arizona residents who do not provide proof of citizenship are still able to vote in federal elections, but cannot vote in the local elections.
So, will the 98,000 impacted voters be able to vote in local races this November as they have done for the last 20 years?
“This happened because we have some misguided policies that are anomalous in the United States by the way,” Fontes said during a Tuesday afternoon press conference. “Every single one of these voters have met the minimum criteria of swearing affirmation under penalty of perjury that they would have to do to vote in every election across the rest of the United State of America. Only Arizona has what I think is an unreasonable burden on its voters. This is a result of bad policy and underfunding of government systems.”
The Maricopa County Recorder’s Office and the Secretary of State’s Office will be bringing this case to the Arizona Supreme Court to determine if these voters are able to vote locally or only federally. Fontes said this will be a “friendly lawsuit,” only to ensure that the outcome is a fair judicial decision. He said that the petition for emergency special action will be filed to the court Wednesday, requesting quick action.
Fontes discouraged affected voters from taking any action at this time, urging them to wait for a decision from the court before attempting to change their voter registration status. However, Arizona’s voter registration deadline is Oct. 7.
“Should the supreme court come down on the side that these folks should become fed only voters, we will advise voters appropriately and the last day and moment to provide proof of citizenship will be at 7 p.m. on Election Day,” Fontes said.
Arizonans are only finding out about this issue within the last 24 hours, he explained, because officials wanted to be sure that they would be able to intelligently answer voters’ questions, ensuring them there is a plan to deal with this situation, noting that perhaps the state is being "too transparent."
Demographically, the voters most impacted are majority Republicans aged 45 to 60.
Fontes urged voters to “sit tight” until contacted by a county or state election official.
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