An Arizona civic engagement group is suing Secretary of State Adrian Fontes for his refusal to provide the list of 218,000 voters who have been registered to vote in Arizona for decades without having provided proof of citizenship.
America First Legal filed a lawsuit on behalf of Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona against the Secretary of State’s Office on Oct. 2, stating that it was against the law for Fontes to refuse to provide a public record without a reasonable excuse.
America First Legal said that in response to the request Fontes’ office said that providing this list could cause voter intimidation or harassment of those on the list.
However, Secretary Fontes declined the request through a letter written by his attorney,” reads an Oct. 3 America First Legal statement. “Rather than treating constituents with respect and decorum, their response was a bombastic tirade that invoked a bizarre conspiracy theory accusing EZAZ.org of secretly planning to harass the voters on the list. There is, of course, no evidence to support Secretary Fontes’s conspiracy theory, and EZAZ.org has no intention of harassing anyone.”
The error that has allowed these individuals to vote without proof of citizenship stems from a coding error on the part of the MVD. The initial issue was reported by Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer on Sept. 7 at which point the error was corrected.
The error affects voters who received their driver’s licenses before Oct. 1, 1996. Before that date, individuals did not have to provide proof of residency to register to vote. They only had to swear affirmation under penalty of perjury – the status quo for the rest of the U.S.
However, if those individuals were reissued a driver’s license sometime after 2004 (when AVID began malfunctioning in this way), the system did not require the MVD to attain proof of citizenship.
