On Friday, a majority of Arizona legislators released a statement expressing their “deep disappointment” with Secretary of State Adrian Fontes for failing to “Accurately Report that a database errors by the Motor Vehicle Department has impacted thousands of Arizona voters.
The group alleges that Fontes deprived “thousands of Arizonans of their opportunity to submit proof of citizenship to vote in Arizona’s elections, as required by Arizona law.”
“It is deeply disappointing that Secretary Fontes, Governor Hobbs, and Attorney General Mayes knew about this administrative error as early as September 10, yet delayed notifying county election officials or the Legislature until a week later. During their call—recently leaked to a reporter—Arizona’s elected leaders appeared to be more concerned with political backlash than displaying leadership and solving this disastrous problem,” the lawmakers wrote in their statement on Friday.
Also on September 10, in a 40-minute phone call, Fontes spoke to Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes and Governor Katie Hobbs, telling them that he had just learned about the 148,000 voters.
In response, Hobbs suggested that the voters be disenfranchised by restricting them to voting only in federal races unless they could quickly produce proof of citizenship.
“If I was in your shoes, Secretary, I would take those 148,000 voters and move them to fed-only and do everything I could to provide the resources for the counties to deal with that additional burden and to ensure the confidence in the system,” Hobbs said. “I’m sure that there’s a very small percentage of those voters that are not actually eligible.”
Fortunately, Fontes disregarded her suggestion, but Republicans say that the fact she would suggest it at all shows how little regard Democrats have for fundamental voting rights for citizens.
On September 20, the Arizona Supreme Court rejected a proposal by Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer to unilaterally change the registration status of nearly 98,000 impacted voters to “federal-only” status, which would have prevented them from voting in state or local races. The Court agreed with the Legislature’s position that the impacted voters should receive a full ballot.
The Court explained, “We are unwilling on these facts to disenfranchise voters en masse from participating in state contests. Doing so is not authorized by state law and would violate principles of due process.”
Then on September 30, Secretary Fontes issued a press release, revealing that an additional 120,000 voters in Arizona may have been affected by the MVD database error, bringing the total to roughly 218,000.
In their statement, lawmakers asked why were these voters were not identified earlier?
Others want to know that as well. This week, a lawsuit was filed on behalf of a group of Arizona activists against Fontes and the Secretary of State’s Office for what they claim is the illegal withholding from the public of a list of over 218,000 individuals who registered to vote without providing proof of citizenship as required by law.
According to the organization that filed the lawsuit, America First Legal (AFL), they are entitled to the list Fontes administers that performs statewide voter registration checks to determine if an individual has provided proof of U.S. citizenship, as required by Arizona law.
The error came to light on September 6, 2024, when Richer identified a flaw in the system that had allowed tens of thousands of individuals to register to vote even though they hadn’t provided proof of citizenship.
This flaw was only revealed to the public when Recorder Richer filed an Emergency Petition in the Arizona Supreme Court on September 17. This lawsuit sought to prevent the affected voter registrants from voting in state and local races. As part of that lawsuit, Secretary Fontes confirmed that he had identified 97,928 registered voters who had been incorrectly marked because of the system flaw as having provided documentary proof of citizenship, even though they had never done so.
“It goes without saying that requiring proof of citizenship to vote is of paramount importance,” says the Arizona lawmakers.
Earlier this year, House Speaker Ben Toma and Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen — without support from Attorney General Mayes — fought in the Mi Familia case all the way to the United States Supreme Court to vindicate A.R.S. § 16-121.01(C), which requires proof of citizenship for individuals to receive and vote a full ballot.
“We will continue to monitor Secretary Fontes’ administration of this election and all litigation surrounding the MVD database/citizenship issues,” wrote the lawmakers. “As Republican members of the Arizona House of Representatives, we remain committed to exercising appropriate oversight during and after the election to ensure that elected officials in our Executive Branch are complying with Arizona’s proof-of-citizenship laws.”
