Arizona Supreme Court Rules 98,000 People Without Confirmed Citizenship Documents Can Still Vote in State Elections

The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Friday that nearly 98,000 people whose citizenship documents have not been confirmed can vote in state and local elections.

The court’s decision comes after authorities discovered a bug in the database that for two decades mistakenly marked voters as having access to the full ballot.

Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, and Stephen Richer, the Republican Maricopa County Clerk, disagreed over what status the electors should have. Richer asked the Supreme Court to weigh in, saying Fontes ignored state law by advising county officials to let the affected electors cast their ballots in their own right.

Fontes said that not allowing voters who believe they have met the voting requirements to access the full ballot would raise equal protection and due process issues.

The Supreme Court agreed with Fontes, saying county officials had no authority to change voters’ status because they had registered long ago and had certified, under penalty, that they were citizens. The justices also said voters were not responsible for the database error and also cited the short time remaining before the Nov. 5 general election.

“We are not prepared, on these facts, to massively deprive voters of their right to participate in state elections,” Chief Justice Ann Scott Timmer said in her ruling.

Arizona is unique in that it requires voters to prove their citizenship to participate in local and state elections. Voters can prove their citizenship by providing a driver’s license or tribal identification number, or by attaching a copy of a birth certificate, passport or naturalization documents.

Arizona considers driver’s licenses issued after October 1996 to be valid proof of citizenship. However, a coding error in the system identified nearly 98,000 voters who obtained their licenses before 1996 — or about 2.5 percent of all registered voters — as fully eligible voters, state officials said.

The error between the state’s voter registration database and the Division of Motor Vehicles would not have impacted the presidential race. But the vote count could tip the scales in closely contested races in the state Legislature, where Republicans hold slim majorities in both chambers.

It could also affect voting measures, including the constitutional right to abortion And criminalize non-citizens to enter Arizona via Mexico at any point other than a port of entry.

In a post on the social media platform X, Richer thanked the court for quickly reviewing the case and Fontes for partnering with him to correct the error.