The Arizona Supreme Court’s chief justice ruled Friday that nearly 100,000 voters should receive regular ballots this fall even though there is no record that they had submitted documentation to state officials proving they are citizens.
The battleground state’s high court issued its ruling three days after officials told the justices they had recently discovered state computer systems had identified some longtime residents as having provided citizenship documents even though they had not.
Election officials said they were confident all or nearly all of the voters are citizens, but some allies of former president Donald Trump seized on the issue to suggest large numbers of immigrants could be voting illegally. Voting by noncitizens is exceedingly rare, according to election experts, but Trump and his supporters have argued stricter laws are needed to prevent it from happening.
Like other states, Arizona requires people to take an oath stating they are citizens when they register to vote. For the last two decades, Arizona has also required them to show birth certificates, naturalization papers or other documents proving citizenship to vote in all races on the ballot.
Litigation over the law persisted for years, and in 2013 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled federal law requires the state to allow registered voters to cast ballots for president and other federal offices even if they have not provided proof of citizenship. In response, the state created a dual registration system that allows people to receive ballots that include races for state and local offices only if they prove they are citizens.
This month, election officials discovered a computer error caused about 98,000 registered voters to be listed as eligible for full ballots even though there was no record they had ever provided citizenship documents.
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer (R) sued Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) on Tuesday and asked the state Supreme Court to immediately take up the case and bar the voters in question from receiving full ballots unless they submit citizenship documents. Fontes argued the court should allow the voters to receive full ballots this fall because the election is so soon. Richer and Fontes described the litigation as a “friendly lawsuit,” saying they shared the goal of getting a quick answer from the court so everyone knows how to handle the matter.
In a nine-page decision, Arizona Chief Justice Ann A. Scott Timmer wrote that the court was rejecting Richer’s request to limit what type of ballots the voters would receive, clearing the way for them to receive full ballots. No dissents were noted.
“We are unwilling on these facts to disenfranchise voters en masse from participating in state contests,” Timmer wrote. “Doing so is not authorized by state law and would violate principles of due process.”
Fontes praised the court for acting quickly.
“Now we can get on with the rest of the preparations for 2024,” Fontes said. “This was the right thing to do for Arizona.”
On social media, Richer thanked the court for acting quickly and said he was pleased the voters would get the full ballots, even though he had asked for the opposite outcome.
“The 100k registrants will continue to vote a full ballot this election,” he wrote on X. “Thank God.”
About 36,500 of the voters are registered as Republicans, about 27,000 as Democrats and about 34,500 as unaffiliated or third party. The partisan breakdown of those voters led some Republicans to fear the court would rule in a way that would make it harder for them to win seats in the narrowly divided legislature and fight a ballot measure aimed at expanding access to abortion.
The case divided Republicans, with some agreeing with Richer that the justices should strictly apply the state’s citizenship law and some siding with Fontes that they should allow the voters to get the same ballots they have in the past.
The people on the list account for about 2 percent of the state’s 4.1 million registered voters. They received their initial driver’s licenses before 1996, got a replacement license sometime after that date and subsequently submitted a voter registration application, either because they moved or registered to vote for the first time.
When they received the replacement license, the state’s computer systems indicated to local elections officials that they had provided citizenship documents even though there is no record that they had. The flaw has existed since 2004, when the state began requiring proof of citizenship for voting, officials said.
Under federal law, election officials are required to send military and overseas ballots to voters by Saturday. Early voting for others in Arizona begins on Oct. 9.
The fight over citizenship documents continues in a separate, long-running case. In 2022, Republican state legislators passed a law to require voters to provide proof of citizenship to vote in all elections, not just state and local ones. Last month the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Arizonans can register to vote for federal elections without providing proof of citizenship while the case continues. It could eventually return to the U.S. Supreme Court.
