Secretary of State Adrian Fontes was ordered Thursday to turn over at least the first 98,000 names on a list of registered voters who may not have submitted proof of citizenship.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney said it was clear that the information Stronger Community Foundation was seeking was public record and subject to disclosure.

Fontes did not dispute this claim. But he said individuals on the list could face intimidation or harassment, and because of an exception in the Public Records Act if release is not in the “best interests of the state,” they have the right to withhold the information. He claimed that there was.

The judge was unconvinced, saying there was “insufficient evidence that an individual’s life is at risk.”

Blaney also said that Stronger Communities, which operates as EZAZ.org, harasses and intimidates voters and conducts large-scale voter challenges in order to protect and harass voters. , said neither Mr. Fontes nor his office provided any evidence that the information was ever used to identify polling places. .

And the judge said Mr. Fontes gave “inconsistent testimony” about exactly how many people were affected by so-called “malfunctions” in the system used by the Department of Motor Vehicles, and as a result, the current He said it raised questions about whether some people on the country’s voter rolls may not have been affected. Provided legally required proof of citizenship.

Still, Blaney acknowledged Fontes’ concerns that there may not yet be a complete list, with estimates as high as 345,000 people affected at some point during the trial earlier this week. .

So he ordered Fontes to release that initial list of 98,000 people by midday on Monday, which the director ultimately conceded during a court hearing.

Blaney then acknowledged the potential threat and prohibited Stronger Communities from using the list to contact affected voters until after Tuesday’s election. He also said that until next Wednesday, the organization can only release copies of its list to county recorders, the president of the Senate, the speaker of the House and members of the House and Senate elections committees.

An aide to Fontes said he was studying the order and “considering options on how to move forward.”

Thursday’s ruling was a victory for Stronger Communities, which says it uses information from voter records to conduct advocacy efforts.

The group’s president, Melissa Hamilton, said the fact that the list won’t be available until Monday means there’s little that can be done to confirm whether there are actually noncitizens on the list ahead of next day’s election. admitted to mean. There’s also the fact that more than 2 million Arizonans have already voted early.

And Hamilton told Capitol Media Services that this was in no way an attempt to prevent 98,000 people, or anyone on the final list, from voting this year.

“The majority of the list is probably nationals,” she says. “But those who don’t, if it exists in this situation, have been given fair warning that they will be caught if they try to violate our laws.”

The lawsuit stems from a 2004 voter-approved law that required proof of citizenship for registration.

Another law from 1996 requires proof of legal presence to obtain an Arizona driver’s license. And on that basis, the 2004 law provides that anyone with a license issued after October 1996 is presumed to have already provided proof of that.

However, people with pre-1996 licenses were required to provide such proof if they registered to vote for the first time or moved to another county.

The problem was that MVD was telling the county that some of these people had licenses from 1996 or later. The report listed the last date of any activity, such as a change of address or duplicate driver’s license, rather than the original date of issue.

The bottom line is that the county used this false information to register people without the legally required evidence.

Because federal law does not require proof of citizenship, by law a person without such proof can vote only in presidential and parliamentary elections.

But the Arizona Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that anyone on the list could vote for any race on the ballot, even if the people on the list weren’t actually citizens. He concluded that there was no solid evidence. More importantly, the justices do not want to make the mistake of disenfranchising voters, most of whom they believe are actually citizens, over record-keeping issues so close to an election. , he said.

Fontes initially told the Supreme Court that there were 98,000 people on the list. His latest press statement puts the number at about 218,000.

That led to Stronger Communities looking for a list.

The group did not say why. And under the Public Records Act, there is no need for that.

And when Fontes refused, the group filed suit.

Perhaps the most important part of Blaney’s decision, independent of this particular dispute, is his conclusion that the public records law exception is narrow.

He rejected Fontes’ argument that the list was not yet complete and the information should not be made public.

“Government agencies cannot withhold records because they believe they contain incomplete or unreliable information,” Blaney said. If a mistake is made, the public will have an even greater stake in the disclosure of such information.”

He particularly criticized Fontes, who argued that he could withhold information if it would save one person’s life.

“Courts have adopted this standard, which states that public officials may withhold public records whenever they subjectively believe that doing so would somehow “save even one life.” In that case, courts would be adopting an impermissibly broad and arbitrary standard of exercising “best judgement.” “The benefit of the state exception engulfs the entire Arizona Public Records Act,” Blaney wrote.