Error in Arizona voter registration system affects 120,000 more people: Secretary of State

PHOENIX – Officials with the Arizona Secretary of State's Office say they have found additional voters affected by a flaw in the voter registration system.

In a statement, bureau officials said a new group of about 120,000 Arizona residents could be affected by what it calls “data coding oversight within ADOT's Motor Vehicle Division (MVD) and Arizona's voter registration databases.”

“This data set includes approximately 79,000 Republicans, 61,000 Democrats, and 76,000 Other Party (OTH), bringing the total number of affected individuals to approximately 218,000,” part of the statement said.

News of the new discovery came almost two weeks later That's what the Maricopa County Recorder's Office found 97,000 voters who were able to register to vote without proof of citizenship. When the discovery was announced, Maricopa County Registrar Stephen Richer said the majority of affected voters were most likely U.S. citizens: they simply had no documented evidence.

Since 2004, Arizona has required voters to provide documented proof of citizenship. So when a driver with an older driver's license registers to vote, the MVD assumes that they have proof of citizenship in the system and allows them to vote with a full ballot. The mistake has allowed them to slip through the cracks for years. Ultimately, the Arizona Supreme Court decided that Affected voters can vote on the entire ballot paper. The secretary of state's office said the decision still stands.

“The reality is that these registrants have met the same legal standard as any other American who registers to vote: they swear under penalty of perjury that they are U.S. citizens. We cannot risk denying actual citizens the right to vote because of a mistake.” “This matter is another example of why we must fund elections, update systems and staffing, and continue our time-tested tradition of safe, fair, and secure elections,” wrote Foreign Minister Adrian Fontes.

“The vast majority of these voters are citizens. There is no real evidence that they are not, and that is why the Supreme Court has decided what it has done, which is that it is OK for all of these voters to receive both state and federal ballots,” said AG Mayes .

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While the majority of voters are Republicans, Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Gina Swoboda said the oversight raises major concerns about the integrity of the state's voter rolls.

“For two or four years I've been lectured about how Republicans are destroying trust in the system by constantly claiming that they believe the election was stolen. What is that? “This is not a loss of trust in the system?” Swoboda said.

While Arizona Republicans argue for allowing these people to fully vote, they are calling for greater levels of transparency in the election process. In response, AG Mayes pointed out that the mistake began and wasn't discovered for 20 years, when the state had Republican governors and Republican secretaries of state.

“I think you have to ask yourself, ‘Why hasn’t this been fixed by Republican governors in the past?’” AG Mayes said. “They often believe in a starving government, and when you don't give the Department of Motor Vehicles the resources it needs, things happen.”