As early as seven years before this information became public, Arizona officials had identified this as a “problem,” attorneys looking into the issue on behalf of Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said, according to the Washington Post.

State law requires voters to provide proof of citizenship, such a passport or birth certificate, when they register in state and local races. Weeks before the 2024 election, however, county and state officials realized many voters did not provide proof of citizenship and had been casting ballots in the state for decades.

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But staff working in both Republican and Democratic administrations in Arizona did not have a clear understanding on why noncitizens were classified in the state’s motor vehicle database as eligible to vote, state records show.

Arizona residents have the ability to register to vote when they receive their driver’s license, which is often where proof of citizenship is provided. Driver’s licenses issued after 1996 are considered a valid proof of citizenship, but the system error marked the original batch of voters who had pre-1996 licenses as eligible to vote in state and local races, according to the Associated Press.

The state has faced a number of challenges in its quest to mandate proof of citizenship for residents to vote. In 2004, voters approved a measure that required proof of citizenship. But after nearly a decade of litigation, the Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that a federal law prevented Arizona from requiring proof of citizenship to vote for president and other federal offices.

To comply with that ruling, Arizona now has a dual-registration system: Those who provide citizenship documents receive full ballots that include local, state and federal races, and those who do not receive ballots with only races for federal offices.

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In turn, a small group of voters were wrongly noted as having provided proof of citizenship when they got their driver’s licenses. The miscodings happened when they received their original license, when they replaced it and when they registered to vote, according to the Post. Fontes’ review found officials became aware of the issue in 2017, under the administrations of Gov. Doug Ducey (R-AZ) and Secretary of State Republican Michele Reagan.

Officials at the time did note there were not records showing why a voter had been classified as a citizen.

“I wish I could be of more help but today we do not make it a practice to ask certain people for proof of citizenship if they have already had a license for 20+ years,” a Motor Vehicle Division employee wrote at the time.

A staffer in Reagan’s office called that “a problem” that needed to be discussed further, with another staffer agreeing and added, “I’m hoping this occurrence would be marginal.”

This error is believed to affect an estimated 218,000 people and Fontes’s office said it is working with county election officials to develop a website for affected voters to update their records electronically before municipal elections take place early 2025.

In 2020 under, employees of then Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who is now Arizona’s governor, found that a noncitizen had been mailed the incorrect ballot when a man alerted Hobbs’ administration that his mother-in-law had received a mail-in ballot even though she was not a citizen. The Hobbs staffer alerted the Maricopa County Recorder’s office, who was at the time Fontes. 

“We’ll reach out to the son-in-law and get this resolved,” a county recorder employee wrote back to the secretary of state’s staff.

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Fontes told the Post that he did not recall the issue being brought to his attention at the recorder’s office. He also noted that his predecessors did not do enough to address the problem or point out  systemic issues with the records keeping.

“This doesn’t just pertain to voter registration,” he said. “It pertains to any educational benefits, any health care benefits. Every state benefit that relies on residency or citizenship is reliant on MVD data — this is an MVD issue. I can’t tell you how many state agencies use motor of the motor vehicle division database and their records and rely on the accuracy of those records, which we know we can’t completely rely on at this time.”