Arizona officials struggle to straighten out voter rolls after proof-of-citizenship mixup

Christian Petersen // Getty Images Because of a 20-year-old government foul-up, about 200,000 Arizona voters will need to come up with proof of their citizenship soon in order to protect their full voting rights, and they might not even know about it yet. County officials waited six months for the Secretary of State’s Office to give them the final list of affected voters who need to be contacted, and clear legal guidance on how to do that so voters are treated fairly across the state. After all, in a few counties, the next elections are coming up in March or May. But while Secretary of State Adrian Fontes recently sent the officials the final voter list and provided a few options on how to move forward, he ultimately declined to offer the kind of uniform guidance counties wanted. That leaves the county recorders who manage voter rolls scrambling now to resolve key questions on their own, such as how much time to give voters to respond, and when to cancel voters who don’t provide the proof. Fontes’ office has been dealing with the problem since it was disclosed in the weeks before the November election. He ordered an investigation to scour emails from past administrations to see who knew about the problem, fired the state’s voter registration director in October, and fired another top voter registration official in December, Votebeat learned through public records requests. Critics of Fontes’ approach say it has dwelled too much on placing blame, rather than figuring out what needs to be done now to get the voter rolls straightened out before the next election. The ensuing recriminations have pitted Fontes and his office against Gov. Katie Hobbs, his predecessor, along with county officials, and former members of his own staff. Colleen Connor, who resigned as the office’s policy director in December, said the terminations of the two staffers surprised her, given that the problem arose from decisions made by Motor Vehicle Division officials decades ago, “completely out of the control of the secretary of state.” Fontes declined to be interviewed, but in written responses to questions, his office defended the way it has proceeded. Aaron Thacker, a spokesperson for the office, said it has been working to “hold individuals accountable as warranted and confirm data integrity.” “We accept that some are critical of this approach,” Thacker said, “but believe we can’t fix a systemic issue without context.” With little time to spare, some counties are now moving ahead on their own, while hoping they can agree on a coordinated plan that can be applied statewide. They may soon ask the Legislature to pass a proposal that they believe will help them make legal and uniform decisions on voter eligibility, Votebeat has learned. That effort will determine what happens when these longtime Arizona residents vote, as early as their March local election or in a potential statewide election later this year, and whether they’ll be treated the same across the state’s 15 counties. Fontes Ordered Investigation Into What Officials Knew Under a 2004 law, Arizona voters must provide documented proof of citizenship, or else they can’t vote in state or local elections. State officials figured out last summer that, for 20 years after that law passed, there was a problem with the way the Motor Vehicle Division’s system provided information to county officials for voter citizenship checks. In September, Fontes announced that about 100,000 Arizona voters’ eligibility was in question because of the error. It was unclear why no one noticed it sooner, Fontes said at the time. A further check found that the total number of voters affected was actually more than 200,000, though the numbers have fluctuated as the Motor Vehicle Division did more investigating, confusing some recorders. With mail ballots for the November election set to go out within weeks, officials brought the issue to the Arizona Supreme Court, which ruled that the voters did not need to provide the citizenship proof before the fall election, but did not provide guidance for subsequent elections. Fontes hired an outside lawyer and launched his investigation. In preliminary findings his office sent to all county recorders in December, obtained by Votebeat through a public records request, Fontes accused Hobbs and former Secretary of State Michele Reagan, a Republican, of knowingly burying the problem. The report said that Hobbs and Reagan “failed to implement safeguards to resolve the matter or at least adequately document the steps needed or actually taken” to address it. Reagan did not return a phone call for comment. Hobbs and Other Critics Hit Back at Fontes Hobbs denied the allegations, reiterating that she and her staff didn’t know about the scope of the problem until it was disclosed in September. In a December letter to Fontes, obtained through a records request, she accused him of spending too much time and money trying to find out who was to blame, while taking too long to address the problem and failing to provide information and uniform direction to county recorders. She dismissed the investigation as “part of a backwards-looking ‘internal review’ focused not on solving the issue, but presumably focused on identifying somebody else to blame.” The exchange exposed the growing tension between the two Democratic officials, who have long had a strained relationship. Hobbs was secretary of state while Fontes was Maricopa County recorder, and Fontes publicly flirted with challenging Hobbs in the 2026 Democratic primary for governor. Hobbs launched her own outside review led by two former recorders and focusing on Motor Vehicle Division policies. She said the point was to come up with ways to improve the system. The results were announced shortly after. The audit reiterated that system errors and MVD policies created the problem over time. It recommended better communication between the MVD and election officials. Fontes Fires Two Employees The day after Fontes sent the findings out to county recorders, he fired Yolanda Morales, his senior voter operations manager. Morales told Votebeat she was told that she was being let go in direct response to what the investigation found. She declined to comment further. Patty Hansen, former Coconino County recorder who worked on Hobbs’ review of MVD policies, said she read the emails involving Morales’ role and doesn’t believe she should have been fired. She called Morales “the most helpful and the most liked” person in the secretary’s office and criticized Fontes’ investigation as political finger-pointing. By that point, Fontes had already fired Craig Stender, his director of voter registration. Stender told Votebeat that he was told he was being let go because of a different matter, the accidental release of some sensitive voter data, but that he “played no part in the release of those records.” Instead, he said, he figures the office chose him and Morales to take the fall for the citizenship issue. But he wonders why he wasn’t interviewed for the investigation. “The whole firing of both of us was purely just them deciding and acting,” he said. He said he believes others knew there was a problem, based on conversations in early phone calls about the issue, although it isn’t clear they knew the extent of it. In response to Morales’ and Stender’s firing and their comments, Fontes said in a statement that his office is “working to solve long-ignored problems.” “I won’t shy away from the tough call even if it’s unpopular,” he said. Thacker said that others on staff were not aware of the problem before last summer. What the Emails Show About Early Warnings Fontes’ investigation, first reported by The Washington Post, found that in a handful of incidents over the years, employees in the Secretary of State’s Office found out, from residents or county recorders, about voters who may not have been citizens but were somehow on the voter rolls. Emails from 2020, when Hobbs was secretary, show that her staff forwarded information about such a case to employees of the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, then led by Fontes. In a January statement to Votebeat, Hobbs’ spokesperson said that at the time, her staff didn’t think this single case suggested a larger problem. But during prior administrations, emails turned up in Fontes’ investigation showed that employees had perceived the larger risk. Morales and Stender were both involved in those email exchanges. In May 2017, when Reagan was secretary, an employee from the Pima County Recorder’s Office reached out to Morales and colleague Janine Petty to let them know that a voter who said she was not a citizen had a license that suggested she was. Morales asked MVD for an explanation, and found out that its driver license records would sometimes incorrectly indicate that the voter had provided proof of citizenship, based on the license’s issuance date, when they had not. The system as set up, “presents a problem because the counties are not verifying citizenship when they should be,” Morales wrote to Petty after the follow-up. Morales continued to insist, in the email chain, that they discuss the larger issue, and Petty indicated they would talk more about it. She did not respond to a request for comment on whether they did. Seven years later, Petty was working in the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office when the issue surfaced again: A noncitizen showed up in the county’s system as a registered voter. Petty flagged it to Recorder Stephen Richer, and insisted on a full investigation, Richer said. “Janine thought it was a big stinking deal and kept digging the whole time,” Richer said. They brought the issue to Fontes, setting off the response. What the Counties Need to Do Now The problem traces back to an MVD policy involving people who got their Arizona licenses before 1996, before the state started collecting citizenship documents and issuing different license types depending on status. The MVD marked anyone who got their license before 1996 as a citizen, even though they hadn’t provided citizenship documentation. County officials rely heavily on driver’s licenses for citizenship status, but when they checked the system for those voters, they were told they were citizens, when they hadn’t ever been asked to provide documents proving it. As a result, over 20 years, 218,000 longtime residents who hadn’t provided citizenship proof were still registered to vote a full ballot, when they should have been allowed to vote only in federal elections. That list has now been whittled to about 200,000, after the state was able to locate birth certificates for some voters. Officials said they would begin to collect the remaining documentation after the election. But since November, Fontes’ office has provided wavering advice to county officials on how to move forward. In late December Hobbs and her staff began pressuring Fontes and his staff to work faster, according to her letter to Fontes and other emails between staff obtained in a records request But there’s now debate about how much authority county recorders have to require the voters to provide it, what the timeline should be, and how to handle special circumstances. In a December presentation to county recorders, the Secretary of State’s Office ticked through the complex legal framework, recent court decisions, and potential options recorders should weigh in their decision on how to move forward. The office provided options, but not direct guidance. “We have been careful since taking office not to overstep our legal bounds in terms of telling the county recorders what to do,” Thacker said in a statement. Hansen, the former Coconino recorder, said that’s not good enough. “I believe very strongly we need uniformity in our procedures,” she said. “I think that’s why the election procedures manual was created. You aren’t treated one way in this county, and one way in another.” Pinal County Recorder Dana Lewis said she also wanted more firm guidance from Fontes. But because of the urgency, she has already started sending notices to her affected voters. Other recorders are more hesitant. To clear it up, recorders say they need to ask state lawmakers to take action, perhaps by passing a law giving them more authority, according to Yavapai County Recorder Michelle Burchill. Jen Marson, executive director of the Arizona Association of Counties, confirmed that recorders are discussing that plan now. Thacker said Fontes’ office is working with counties on next steps, including supporting their request before the Legislature. “At the end of the day this is about what is best for Arizona voters,” he wrote. This story was produced by Votebeat and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.