Arizona poised to allow 218,000 with unconfirmed citizenship to vote

SUMMARY

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is facing scrutiny for moving forward with plans to allow around 218,000 registered voters to participate in the 2024 elections despite questions surrounding their citizenship status. The issue surfaced after election officials discovered that 98,000 Arizonans registered to vote had not confirmed their citizenship when receiving driver’s licenses before 1996. Now, that number has more than doubled, causing concern over election integrity in a critical battleground state. Fontes, a Democrat, has resisted calls from conservative group America First Legal and Arizona Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin to release a list of these voters, prompting a lawsuit set for a court hearing on October 15. Fontes argues that under state law, all these voters must be allowed to cast ballots, as they signed under penalty of perjury when registering. However, state Department of Transportation records do not verify all citizenship statuses.