Nearly 98,000 people who could not establish that they were U.S. citizens can now vote in Arizona’s state and local elections after the Arizona Supreme Court ruled Monday.
The move comes after a “coding error” in the state’s election software.
Problems occurred when a software malfunction in Arizona’s voter registration system hit around 100,000 voters. The flaw victimized people who got their driver’s license before October 1996 and then had duplicates of the driver’s license issued after they registered to vote in or since 2004.
In return, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, said that he would still mail ballots to the people affected. In a phone interview, Fontes countered that it actually was found through regular voter roll maintenance and not the result of illegal efforts to register.
“This was discovered not because somebody was voting illegally and not because somebody was attempting to vote illegally, as far as we can tell,” Fontes said at a Tuesday afternoon news conference. “And this was basic voter roll maintenance, and it showed us that there is this issue.”
Yet, not every person agreed with how to move forward. Republican Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer had asked the state Supreme Court in a special action to determine whether those voters could only cast a federal-only ballot.
“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,” Richer wrote on X.
At the national and state level, Arizona law includes a unique proof of citizenship requirement in its voter registration process — voters must provide documentation of their citizenship or be denied participation in all local and state elections.
The decision and its fallout are especially noteworthy since Arizona is a crucial swing state that voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in 2020. The prerequisites for citizenship also complicate Arizona’s ongoing electoral arguments, with both parties jousting to take control in different ways.
