State elections officials have identified another 120,000 Arizona voters who are improperly registered to vote because of a glitch in the state’s driver’s license database, bringing the total number of affected voters to 218,000 — a number that may grow as officials continue to identify more longtime voters who were never required to provide proof of citizenship.
The glitch, which was first discovered two weeks ago, found that about 98,000 Arizonans who had registered to vote in the past 20 years had been inaccurately labeled as having provided proof of citizenship.
The error in the database used by the state’s Motor Vehicles Division affects people with pre-1996 licenses who had received replacements. On Monday, the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office said it had identified another 120,000 voters who have lived in Arizona and been registered to vote for decades, but who were never asked to prove their citizenship because of the “data coding oversight” in the system.
The voters, who have all attested to being United States citizens, are part of the data set which includes 79,000 Republicans, 61,000 Democrats and 76,000 listed as “other party,” according to the Secretary of State.
Arizonans who cannot provide proof of citizenship in the state are only permitted to vote in federal races because voters in 2004 approved a ballot measure requiring proof of citizenship in order to register to vote.
Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said Monday that the voters were “mistakenly marked as having provided documentary proof of citizenship” and that state agencies are working to figure out a fix. Election officials are planning to contact the affected voters after the general election. In the meantime, those who are affected are still eligible to vote a full ballot.
Gov. Katie Hobbs has ordered an independent audit of the MVD’s registration system in light of the discovery.
The issue comes just five weeks before the Nov. 5 election, and just days before early voting begins on Oct. 9. Ballots for overseas and military voters have already been sent out.
The Arizona Supreme Court ruled on Sept. 20 that voters caught up in the error can still vote a full ballot, and Fontes’ office said that, despite the new numbers, that decision still stands.
The issue was originally brought to the attention of Fontes’ Office by an employee of Maricopa County, according to VoteBeat.
Fontes called out Proposition 200, the voter-approved law that created the system in which voters had to provide documentary proof of citizenship to register, as an “extreme law.”
“Let’s be clear, Prop 200 is an extreme law that attempts to solve a problem that is vanishingly rare,” Fontes said in a written statement. “The reality is these registrants have met the same legal standard as every other American who registers to vote: swearing under penalty of perjury that they are U.S. citizens. We can’t risk denying actual citizens the right to vote due to an error out of their control. This issue is another example of why we need to fund elections, update systems and staff, and carry forward our proven tradition of safe, fair and secure elections.”
The news also comes as leaked audio of Fontes, Hobbs and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes first reported on by the Washington Post revealed that the three worried about how conspiracy theorists would react to the news despite voting by non-citizens to be extremely rare.
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