PHOENIX (AP) — A judge has denied a request by 15 Arizona counties to verify the citizenship of about 42,000 voters who registered solely to vote in federal elections in the presidential battleground state, denying those seeking checks. concluded that the request was too close to the November 5 election and had no legal standing.
A lawsuit filed on behalf of Arizona voters and the Arizona conservative advocacy group Strong Communities Foundation seeks a court order requiring county recorders to seek citizenship verification for those voters from federal authorities. Ta.
Arizona requires voters to prove their citizenship to participate in local and state elections. Voters who do not provide proof of citizenship but swear to be U.S. citizens are only allowed to vote for president, the U.S. House of Representatives, or the Senate.
The lawsuit claimed the agency was not complying with a 2022 law that requires registration information to be checked against various government databases.
In an order issued Friday, U.S. District Judge Chrissa Lanham wrote that “they (the plaintiffs) have not demonstrated a clear threat of harm and that the actions they request are actionable in the midst of a general election. I haven’t said that,” he said.
Lanham, a candidate for President Joe Biden, said he rejects forcing county recorders to divert resources from election preparation to citizenship examinations just weeks before Election Day.
The plaintiffs told the court they intended to appeal the decision.
America First Legal, which is run by former Donald Trump adviser Stephen Miller and is representing the plaintiffs, said in a statement Tuesday that the appeals effort “removes potential illegal aliens and noncitizens from Arizona’s voter rolls. “This was done in order to demand their legal removal.”
Taylor Kinnapp, a spokeswoman for Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, declined to comment on the judge’s order.
The lawsuit argues that it is not enough for county officials to refer to the database; they should ask federal authorities to verify voters’ citizenship status.
Noting that federal law prohibits the systematic purge of voter lists within 90 days after an election, Lanham said, the plaintiffs simply sent letters to federal authorities asking questions about the citizenship of federal-only voters. He clarified that he was only asking that the documents be sent to. . The plaintiffs said they were not seeking to remove people from voter rolls.
The 42,000 voters at issue in the lawsuit have not yet had their citizenship confirmed, but will still be eligible to vote in November’s local, state and federal elections, according to Secretary of State Adrian’s office. It is separate from the much larger group of voters who are allowed to do so. Fontes.
About a month ago, officials discovered a database error that incorrectly designated nearly 98,000 voters as having access to all ballots, even though their citizenship had not been verified.
Driver’s licenses issued after 1996 are considered valid proof of citizenship, but a system error prevented voters with driver’s licenses issued before 1996 from voting in state and local elections. marked as eligible.
The state Supreme Court has concluded that voters who can already vote in federal elections will be able to vote in state and local elections leading up to the 2024 general election.
A little over a week later, the number of misclassified voters jumped from about 98,000 to about 218,000. Fontes’ office said all people included in the database error are still eligible to cast their full votes.
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