Lawsuit could bar Arizona residents with missing citizenship documents from voting in state races

A top election official in Arizona said filed a suit Tuesday that could bar almost 100,000 residents from voting in state and local races this fall, claiming they have not provided citizenship documents required under state law. Under Arizona law, residents who fail to submit documentary proof of citizenship — or “whose U.S. citizenship cannot be verified” via their driver’s license registration records “or other record in the statewide voter registration database” may only vote in federal elections. In a lengthy post on X, Richer, who helps oversee elections in the battleground state’s largest county, said his office had discovered a “flaw” in the way state officials and systems verify citizenship via driver’s license registration records that resulted in 97,000 people who have sworn that they are U.S. citizens not having had provided documented proof of citizenship. “But they have NOT provided documented proof of citizenship.” As a result, if those 97,000 people failed to provide such documentation, they won’t be able to vote in state and local races this fall, Richer said. Richer, however, is an outspoken defender of the swing state’s election process who has forcefully pushed back against the unfounded voter fraud claims that spread after the 2020 and 2022 campaigns. “We’re just taking differing legal positions so we can get the rule.” He predicted the state Supreme Court would rule this week, as mail-in ballots are scheduled to be sent out in some counties to some military voters as early as Thursday. Asked by NBC News whether the situation could spur new election conspiracy theories, Fontes replied that “this has already spurred new conspiracy theories about this election.” “But those conspiracy theories are just as good as all of the other conspiracy theories are,” Fontes said. Fontes added at his news conference that one reason the legal question had to be settled so quickly and crucially in the first place was that “we’ve got policies that are being driven by conspiracy theories, and we have for a long time.” “It has never been the case in the United States of America or in Arizona that noncitizen voting has been anything other than vanishingly rare,” Fontes said. Since 1996, Arizona has required residents to provide proof of citizenship to obtain a driver’s license. Starting in 2004, the “vast majority of voter registration applicants have satisfied their documented proof of citizenship requirements for voter registration purposes by having this proof on file with the Motor Vehicle Division,” Richer said. “To confirm this, the voter registration simply runs a check with MVD to make sure the voter got his license after 1996,” he wrote. But Richer’s office discovered a flaw that made it so a specific group of residents — who received a license prior to 1996 and who later received a replacement one — were automatically deemed by the statewide voter registration system and the Motor Vehicle Department to have “had documented proof of citizenship on file with the MVD” when none had actually been provided. Katie Hobbs and Fontes, both Democrats, “to fix this moving forward.” A news release from Fontes’ office said that: “Since 2004, these requirements have tightened significantly. To resolve this, the state has taken legal steps to ensure these mostly Republican voters can fully participate in the 2024 election.” Fontes’ office said he will ask the state Supreme Court to allow all affected voters to receive full ballots and that voters will be allowed to provide the required documents before Election Day. In a statement, Hobbs said her “team identified and fixed an administrative error that originated in 2004, and affects longtime residents who received a driver’s license before 1996.” – This Summarize was created by Neural News AI (V1). Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/arizona-missing-citizenship-documents-voting-lawsuit-rcna171499