PHOENIX — The number of registered Arizona voters affected by a 20-year-old coding glitch in state databases has now more than doubled, to 218,000, Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes announced Monday.
The news came just 10 days after a bipartisan solution in court ensured the original group of 98,000 voters would retain their voting rights.
Here's what we know:
- The 120,000 newly discovered voters will be allowed to vote a full ballot, with state, federal and local elections and ballot measures, according to Fontes. The Arizona Supreme Court signed off on that solution two weeks ago for the original group of 98,000 voters.
- The voters can produce records of their citizenship status after the November election.
- The expansion of the voters affected was prompted by a public records request by 12News for voter registration information on a noncitizen who is a longtime resident of the Valley.
- More voters might be affected by the data glitch.
This latest discovery of potentially questionable voter registrations comes just nine days before early voting begins in Arizona, on Oct. 9.
It breathes new life into Republicans' demands to require documented proof-of-citizenship for all voters, and potentially provides ammunition for anticipated lawsuits over the November election results.
All 218,000 voters — one in every 20 registered voters statewide — got caught up in Arizona's unusual bifurcated voter registration system.
They are longtime Arizonans, roughly between the ages of 45 and 60, who obtained a driver's license before 1996. At the time, they only had to sign an attestation, , that they were U.S. citizens, under penalty of perjury.
A 2004 state law requires documented proof of citizenship to vote in state and local elections.
A coding error discovered early this month in the state registration database maintained by the Motor Vehicle Division showed the voters' citizenship status wasn't properly reviewed.
Voters who don't document their citizenship can fill out a federal ballot only. They must also attest, under penalty of perjury, that they are citizens.
Arizona Republican Party Chair Gina Swoboda supported the Supreme Court's decision to allow all 98,000 affected voters to fill out the full ballot, even though their citizenship status hadn't been properly confirmed.
But on Monday, Swoboda ripped Fontes for failing to give counties the voter information they needed to determine whether the voters were indeed citizens.
"They continue to move goalposts and crush voter confidence," she said in a statement to 12News.
"They have yet to provide the list of affected voters to our county recorders and now we know why. It is unacceptable."
Research on voting by noncitizens shows it is "extraordinarily rare."
The data glitch has persisted since the 2004 passage of the Arizona law requiring documented proof of citizenship in order to vote in state and local elections in Arizona.
Maricopa County has had three recorders during that period; Arizona has had five secretaries of state.
The staff of current Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer discovered the glitch and brought it to Fontes' attention.
The second scouring of the voter rolls occurred after a 12News public records request to Richer's office about a Maricopa County voter's registration, both Richer and a Fontes spokesman confirmed.
The man is a noncitizen who had a pre-1996 driver's license and was registered to vote after he renewed his license in 2021. He received a voter ID card in the mail.
He contacted 12News after the initial story about the 98,000 voters whose citizenship hadn't been properly vetted.
A 2016 news report about a similar story - in this case a noncitizen who intentionally registered to vote to see what would happen - resulted in the Maricopa County Recorder's Office detecting a "loophole."
The loophole, it appears, was never closed.
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