Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes has been ordered by the Superior Court of Arizona in Maricopa County to release a list of more than 218,000 registered voters who did not provide proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote.
According to The Post Millennial, the court’s order requires Fontes to give the Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona, a conservative watchdog group, the “original list of approximately 98,000 Affected Voters as specifically identified in Richer v Fontes” by Monday. Arizona’s secretary of state will also be required to release “any other datasets, compilation of information, lists, or communications from MVD containing personally identifying information (PII) about Affected Voters” by Monday.
“As the Court admonished the parties prior to and during the hearing, the issue for the Court to decide is whether the records that Plaintiff requested must be released pursuant to Arizona’s public records law,” the court said, according to Fox News. “Despite the political undertones, this is simply a public records case.”
The order comes after American First Legal filed a lawsuit against Fontes for withholding the list of voters who failed to provide proof of citizenship with the Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona. According to The Post Millennial, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, discovered a flaw in September regarding the state’s system that allowed individuals to register to vote without providing proof of U.S. citizenship. Following the discovery, Richer filed a petition with the Arizona Supreme Court.
READ MORE: Supreme Court allows Virginia to remove 1,600 non-citizens from voter rolls
Celebrating Thursday’s court win against Fontes, America First Legal tweeted, “We just WON our lawsuit against the AZ Secretary of State for illegally withholding his list of the 218K+ registered voters who did not provide proof of citizenship. He must produce his complete list of these voters by MONDAY — before Election Day.”
Fox News reported that during a hearing regarding the lawsuit, Fontes admitted that a system error had impacted roughly 218,000 Arizona voters. A press release from America First Legal noted that 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.”
In late September, Fontes revealed that the state had discovered an additional 120,000 individuals who registered to vote without providing proof of citizenship, according to The Post Millennial.
According to The Post Millennial, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that the individuals who registered to vote without providing proof of citizenship should be allowed to still vote in local, state, and federal elections.
