Roughly 100,000 Arizona residents who have not submitted citizenship documents could be barred from voting in state and local elections due to a new lawsuit.
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer filed a lawsuit regarding a “flaw” in the system that caused specific residents to be registered to vote despite them not having provided valid proof of citizenship, as required by Arizona law.
Any license issued after October 1996 is considered a valid proof of citizenship. However, the error occurred because these approximately 97,000 residents received a license before then and later received a replacement one, whereby they were erroneously automatically deemed to have provided proof of citizenship.
Richer’s lawsuit seeks to bar these residents from voting in state and local elections in 2024, but the same doesn’t apply to federal elections, which do not require the same proof of documents.
“This flaw has existed since 2004. In every county. Across the state,” he said in a lengthy X post. Richer oversees the public recording of documents in Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest.
“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,” he said. “The Secretary argues that it is too close to the election to implement such a change and that it would be unduly burdensome on voters and deprive them of their voting rights. That is why we are going to the courts. To get a clear answer.”
Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes took a different view, saying that he was taking steps to ensure that the voters could fully participate in the 2024 election. He also suggested that the voters were mostly Republicans.
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“Since 2004, these requirements have tightened significantly,” he said at a press conference. “Recently, officials found that some long-term Arizonans, who were registered under less strict rules, had not been asked to meet the new standards due to a coding oversight. To resolve this, the state has taken legal steps to ensure these mostly Republican voters can fully participate in the 2024 election.”
Richer became a national figure in 2020 and 2022 after publicly feuding with former President Donald Trump and gubernatorial Kari Lake in those respective years over their claims that their elections were rigged. He lost his primary in July.