Arizona counties are asking longtime voters affected by decades of voter registration issues to prove they are U.S. citizens. However, some election officials believe that, unless new laws or court orders say otherwise, those voters will still be able to vote in future elections, whether or not they provide evidence.

Before last year’s election, election officials discovered that the state had not properly checked evidence of citizenship in some voters. And now the county is reaching out to an estimated 200,000 voters affected by the issue.

LoteBeat was first reported The county had contacted the affected people. This includes the Arizona 46-year-old who originally received his Arizona driver’s license before 1996 and later registered for the ballot since 2004, when state law requires evidence of the ballot.

The majority of those voters live in Maricopa County, but the affected voters live throughout the state. Some counties confirmed with KJZZ that they had contacted those voters and asked them to provide evidence of citizenship.

• The Maricopa County Recorder’s Office will mail notifications to more than 100,000 residents after the May 20 elections at Goodyear and Glendale.
• The PIMA County Recorder office will soon begin mailing notifications to approximately 30,000 affected voters.
• The Coconino County Recorder’s office wrote letters to 5,596 affected residents in March to resolve recorder issues with nearly 2,000 people.
• Mohave County affected about 4,500 voters and sent around 4,200 letters on March 7th.
• Yabapai County has affected more than 10,000 voters and has begun mailing notifications.
• The Yuma County Recorder office mailed a notification to approximately 3,800 affected voters on March 21.

Election officials from Apache, Cochise, Gila, Greenlee, La Paz, Navajo, Pinal and Santa Cruz counties did not respond to requests for comment.

Reaching the affected people and rectifying the problem is a tall job, especially in small counties with limited staff.

Yavapai County recorder Michelle Burchill said he chose not to mail notifications to all 10,000 residents at once.

“We’ll be mailing out the first batch of last week and sending around 2,500 people a week so that we can keep up with the influx of calls and responses to our small staff,” Burchill said. “We’ve got a lot of calls and we see a lot of voters returning the necessary documents. Most of the time, our voters were happy to understand us and were happy to support us without too many complaints.”

Graham County, the state’s third smallest county, has yet to determine how many voters are affected.

“We don’t have a timeline at this point,” said Graham County recorder Polly Merriman.

It is also unclear that voters affected by this issue must provide evidence of citizenship to vote in future elections.

According to the Secretary of State, voters previously affected by the error have one to provide evidence until 7pm on the eve of the election.

Sam Stone, Chief of Staff for Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap, said it was 35 days after voters in that county received a letter providing evidence of citizenship.

“Voters who do not respond will be moved to “federal only” status,” Stone said. That is, they said they would only be eligible to vote in future federal elections. He said the voters could be affected in the upcoming elections in November 2025.

Both of these statements conclude with bills currently pending in the Arizona Legislature. This requires that the county recorder be removed from his aggressive status if he is notified that he has not provided proven citizenship and cannot resolve the issue within 35 days. House Bill 2038 allows a person to vote in the election if they provide proof by 7pm on Election Day.

However, the bill has not yet become law, so recorders from other counties disagree with Stone.

“First, we want to make it clear that all voters in Coconino County, affected by this unfortunate issue, will remain fully voting status and will be able to vote in all future elections.

Both Yavapai County recorders, Sonderegger and Burchill, said they are currently actively sending notifications to voters if new laws or court orders affect those voters.

“Now we’re still waiting for the possibility of laws on how to deal with these voters, so there’s nothing to prevent them from voting,” Burchill said.

The whole situation is causing confusion among voters.

“Most subscribers are confused, but I understand that documentary evidence is generally provided. [citizenship] A spokesman for the Yuma County recorder said.

Voting Beat spoke with voters who had already received notices, including Gila County residents who didn’t think it was a legitimate letter from election officials.