An Arizona voting office is standing by its decision to restore the voter registration status of 98,000 unconfirmed citizens.
As previously reported, because of a supposed “glitch” in Arizona’s “MVD” election system, 98,000 residents were allowed to register to vote without proving their citizenship status.
In a statement to Fox News, the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office confirmed that the 98,000 have since had their registration status approved, meaning they may vote on Nov. 5th.
“Maricopa County did not receive a complete list from the Secretary of State’s Office regarding who may have been impacted by the MVD data oversight,” the statement reads.
“However, if impacted voters submitted a new voter registration form after the oversight was found, they appeared in our system as needing to provide [documentary proof of citizenship] upon their new registration form being processed. These voters were contacted individually to let them know their registration was incomplete. However, after further consideration, the decision was made to fully restore those voters from the not registered status, only if they were previously an existing, registered voter,” the statement continues.
“Additionally, we know roughly 2,000 voters who were impacted in the MVD data oversight submitted voter registration updates and some of those may have been contacted about providing DPOC,” the statement concludes.
The county recorder added, “But since then, regardless of if they have provided that additional information, they have since been restored their original status for this election.”
This comes as an Arizona court ruled last Thursday that the names of these 98,000 people have to be turned over to Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona, a conservative nonprofit that sued for access via America First Legal.
BREAKING: A judge in Maricopa County has ordered the Arizona Secretary of State to release the names of 98,000 registered voters who have not provided proof of citizenship to the state. pic.twitter.com/uQPN4xePcS
— Patrick Webb (@RealPatrickWebb) October 31, 2024
“Judge Scott Blaney said the court received no credible evidence showing the information would be misused or encourage violence or harassment against the voters whose citizenship hasn’t been verified,” according to Phoenix news station KSAZ.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, was not happy with the court’s decision.
“I tried to stop this,” he told reporters, according to the New York Times. “I have fought as hard as I could to keep your names and your personal identifying information away from the folks who I don’t trust — and I have good reason not to trust them with that specific information.”
It’s not clear what the Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona will do with the information.
The good news is, as previously reported, that the glitch allegedly affected more Republicans than Democrats.
“Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes announced … [that] the problem affects more Republicans than Democrats or Independents,” according to the Washington Post.
And so if the numbers are accurate, this means more Republican voters versus Democrat voters would have been ostensibly “disenfranchised” had the 98,000 not been allowed to vote.
Plus, there is evidence to suggest the 98,000 are indeed citizens who’ve been in the state a really long time.
“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,” the Post notes.
“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,” according to the Post.
But on the other hand, there’s evidence that the state’s driver’s license system is also corrupted.
“An audit last year of the state transportation department found extensive problems with the state’s oversight of third-party vendors, according to the state auditor general report,” the Post notes.
“Problems included the issuance of driver’s licenses and identification cards to ‘unqualified or unauthorized’ people — and a lack of ‘documentation confirming individuals/entities were qualified and/or authorized’ to receive car titles or driver’s licenses and identification cards,” according to the Post.
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