This is may be the most consequential election in decades. And some are willing to stoop to extreme lows to win.
Now this critical swing state moves to greenlight non-citizen voting.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is charging ahead with his controversial decision to allow around 218,000 registered voters to participate in the 2024 election, despite serious, lingering doubts about their citizenship status.
While conservatives sound the alarm, Fontes, a Democrat, remains defiant in his refusal to provide transparency on the issue.
America First Legal, a conservative group, has filed a lawsuit demanding access to the list of these voters, and a Republican state lawmaker has joined in, sending a letter demanding the same.
Yet Fontes continues to stonewall, resisting these calls for accountability. The showdown is set for an Arizona court on October 15, where arguments will be heard over Fontes’s decision to withhold the list.
The troubling discovery—that hundreds of thousands of voters in a crucial border state may not have provided proper documentation—came after officials realized that 98,000 Arizonans with pre-1996 driver’s licenses lacked proof of citizenship in the state’s records.
Initially, this figure was alarming enough, but Fontes recently doubled down, admitting the real number is now more than twice as large.
He dismissed concerns, calling it an “evolving situation” and maintaining that the law supports these registrants voting in the upcoming 2024 elections.
Fontes claims that all these individuals affirmed their citizenship under penalty of perjury when registering, yet somehow, the Arizona Department of Transportation doesn’t have documented proof of their citizenship.
That’s a glaring oversight, especially when Arizona law demands proof of citizenship to vote in state and local elections.
Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Gina Swoboda expressed concern, stating that while the vast majority of these voters are likely citizens, the situation could damage voter confidence.
“If people think it’s a big mess, it will hurt turnout,” Swoboda warned.
Her worries are compounded by the delicate nature of the situation, as federal law prohibits removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of an election, creating a potential legal quagmire.
Swoboda underscored the importance of handling this carefully: “You can’t deprive these people of your ballot. It’s the 14th Amendment.”
But the fact that this issue even exists so close to a national election casts a shadow over Arizona’s electoral process.
Fontes, in his latest update, reassured the public that state officials are working to verify the citizenship of these voters and cited a recent Arizona Supreme Court ruling, which mandates that the original 98,000 voters be allowed to cast full ballots.
However, the fact that one noncitizen had already slipped through the cracks, as revealed by a Maricopa County official, raises serious questions about how secure this process really is.
Maricopa County, where President Biden won by a slim margin in 2020, remains a focal point of controversy.
While previous lawsuits challenging the county’s handling of the election were thrown out, this latest debacle could reignite concerns ahead of another fiercely contested race.
The 218,000 questionable voters aren’t confined to Maricopa; they are scattered across the state, meaning the issue could have widespread implications.
Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin has been one of Fontes’s most vocal critics, calling out the Secretary of State for refusing to release the voter list. Kolodin took to X (formerly Twitter), sarcastically commenting, “Nothing to see here!” after Fontes’s refusal.
America First Legal, in their lawsuit, emphasized that transparency is essential to restoring trust in Arizona’s elections, writing that the lawsuit aims “to restore public trust in our State’s electoral system by ensuring transparency about the Defendants’ failures.”
As Arizona gears up for 2024, the lingering questions about citizenship verification cast a long shadow, and Fontes’s reluctance to provide answers only adds to the uncertainty.
Stay tuned to Prudent Politics.
