A Maricopa County court has ruled that Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) must release the names of more than 218,000 registered voters who did not provide proof of citizenship upon registering to vote, noting in the ruling that Fontes illegally withheld the list.
It is illegal in Arizona to register to vote without providing proof of citizenship, yet this group of 218,000 people were incorrectly marked as providing proof of citizenship and are still going to be allowed to vote.
MASSIVE SCANDAL IN ARIZONA!
218,000 voters have been wrongly marked as having provided proof of citizenship due to an “error.”
These voters will STILL BE ABLE TO VOTE in the general election even though they didn’t give proof of citizenship.
This election fraud is disgraceful! pic.twitter.com/F2bh6TZReY
— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) October 1, 2024
A flaw in the system that allowed thousands of individuals to register to vote without proof of citizenship was discovered on September 6, 2024, by Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer.
In early October, America First Legal filed a lawsuit on behalf of the nonprofit organization Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona after Fontes withheld the list of names of these 218,000 voters — as Arizona Public Records law requires this information to be released if a citizen requests it.
/1‼️🗳️NEW LAWSUIT: ARIZONA ILLEGALLY COVERING UP VOTER SCANDAL
Arizona is illegally withholding the list of 218,000+ registered voters who have not provided proof of citizenship as required by law.
We just sued the AZ Secretary of State to obtain it: pic.twitter.com/WSkFcnAcH4
— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) October 3, 2024
On Thursday, the Superior Court of Arizona in Maricopa County issued an order stating that Fontes must release the names of these individuals to the nonprofit organization. The order specifically stated that the Arizona secretary of state must provide the Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona with “the original list of approximately 98,000 Affected Voters as specifically identified in Richer v Fontes” by Monday, the day before the election — and he must also release “any other datasets, compilation of information, lists, or communications from MVD containing personally identifying information (PII) about Affected Voters.”
Prior to America First Legal’s lawsuit, Richer had filed an Emergency Petition with the Arizona Supreme Court to “prevent the affected voter registrants from voting in state and local races,” according to an X post from America First Legal citing their press release.
The post went on to note: “As part of that lawsuit, Secretary Fontes confirmed that he had identified 97,928 registered voters who had been incorrectly marked because of the system flaw as having provided documentary proof of citizenship, even though they had never done so.” Fontes later announced that another 120,000 people had been discovered to have not provided proof of citizenship when registering to vote.
/3 This flaw was revealed to the public when Recorder Richer filed an Emergency Petition in the Arizona Supreme Court on September 17. This lawsuit sought to prevent the affected voter registrants from voting in state and local races.
As part of that lawsuit, Secretary Fontes…
— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) October 3, 2024
The Arizona Supreme Court responded to Richer’s lawsuit by ruling that these voters would still be allowed to vote in federal, state, and local elections despite not having followed the law. This ruling prompted America First Legal to file their lawsuit demanding the names of these voters after Fontes did not release them willingly.
