A so-called error in the Arizona Motor Vehicle Department’s (MVD) system, which provides driver’s license information to the state’s voter registration system for citizenship verification, has caused 97,000 voter registrations to be approved without verifying citizenship.
This has apparently been happening for 20 years and was somehow not discovered until now.
This comes just days before military and overseas ballots are set to be mailed out on Thursday. Early ballots will be sent to voters across the state on October 9.
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer announced on Tuesday that his office is suing the Secretary of State’s office after discovering a loophole in the state’s voter registration system that, Richer says, for 20 years has allowed individuals who received a driver’s license before 1996 to vote without citizenship verification.
The issue has existed since 2004, when Arizona began requiring documentary proof of citizenship to vote. Licenses issued before Arizona required proof of citizenship to drive in 1996, regardless of citizenship status, showed as proof of citizenship on file with the MVD.
“If a driver received a license prior to 1996, he did not have a documented proof of citizenship on file. But then, if he got a duplicate license (e.g. in the case of losing a license), the issuance date would be updated in the statewide voter registration’s interface with MVD,” Richer said.
“The number is about 97,000 registrants across the state.” According to the lawsuit, “there are 53,445 Affected Voters in Maricopa County.”
Later today, my office (@RecordersOffice) is suing the Secretary’s office (@AZSecretary) regarding how to handle certain voters who need to provide documented proof of citizenship.
Since 2004, Arizona has been the only state in the country to require that a voter provide…
— Stephen Richer—MaricopaCountyRecorder (prsnl acct) (@stephen_richer) September 17, 2024
Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs said in a statement, “After Recorder Richer brought an erroneous voter registration record to my attention, my team identified and fixed an administrative error that originated in 2004, and affects longtime residents who received a driver’s license before 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. I’m proud of MVD for their hard work implementing a fix to this problem in record time.”
After a closer look, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said that his office found close to 98,000 registrants whose citizenship went unchecked, AZ Capitol Times reports.
Notably, this comes after the US Supreme Court ruled that a voter registration law requiring proof of citizenship on state registration forms to vote in local elections will go into effect ahead of the 2024 election. Voters who use the federal voter registration form are still allowed to vote in federal elections, an issue that the SAVE Act would have solved had Democrats not blocked the legislation in the Senate.
US Supreme Court Upholds Arizona’s Law Requiring Proof of Citizenship to Register to Vote
Richer’s lawsuit challenges Secretary of State Fontes’ position that the voters should be eligible to vote in all elections on the full ballot and not be limited to a “Federal Only” ballot without providing proof of citizenship as required by law.
This is a developing story…
