NEW: 100,000 Swing State Voters Receive Wrong Ballots

An “administrative issue” is being blamed after nearly 100,000 voters in Arizona received ballots for someone other than themselves, raising questions about how long the error has been occurring and why it’s only being caught now.

ABC15 in Phoenix reported that the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office uncovered that 97,000 local residents had been impacted, and it can’t be ruled out that non-citizens have been provided ballots to vote. At issue is whether many of these voters are being given full ballots rather than federal-only ballots. Stephen Richer, a local election official and Republican, announced on X he would be suing Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes over the error.

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“Later today, my office is suing the Secretary’s office regarding how to handle certain voters who need to provide documented proof of citizenship,” he wrote Wednesday morning. “Since 2004, Arizona has been the only state in the country to require that a voter provide documented proof of citizenship in order to vote a full ballot. For all other states, the registrant simply has to attest under penalty of law that he is a United States citizen. Since 1996, Arizona has also required that residents provide proof of citizenship in order to obtain most forms of drivers licenses.”

In 2004, Arizona implemented a firewall against non-citizen voting, ordering the state’s Motor Vehicles Division to screen the vast majority of voter registrations that come through its office. Only citizens are allowed to obtain a drivers license in Arizona. However, Richer went on, drivers who obtained their license before 1996 do not have their citizenship records on file with the MVD, an oversight he said has been unaddressed since 2004. “My office discovered this issue last week, and we have been working with the Governor’s Office, the Secretary’s Office, the MVD, and the Attorney General to fix this moving forward,” he added.

“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.”

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

Richer drew headlines earlier this year after losing his Republican primary against a MAGA candidate who stood by former President Donald Trump’s assertion that he won Arizona four years ago. The hotly contested Sunbelt state was narrowly called for Biden on election night in 2020. Richer stood by the outcome, defying requests from Trump’s attorneys that he challenge ballots and pursue a statewide recount.

Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs addressed the controversy in a statement to the ABC affiliate. “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.”

According to Arizona Clean Elections, “A Federal Only Voter is a voter who registers to vote, but does not provide documentary proof of citizenship or proof of residency, and/or the county recorder is unable to ascertain citizenship status of the voter. Therefore, the federal-only voter may only vote in federal elections (President, U.S. Senator, and U.S. House of Representatives).”

A Full Ballot voter has “provided documentary proof of citizenship and residency when registering to vote, or the county recorder ascertained proof of citizenship from the voter registration database or the Motor Vehicle Division. A full ballot includes federal elections, state elections and local elections.”

An example of federal-only voters are college students, many of whom are in-state for education and do not have access to their birth records while attending school. In those cases, they are normally provided access to presidential, U.S. Senate, and congressional races, but not local ones.

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