(AmericanProsperity.com) – Almost one hundred thousand people whose citizenship documents haven’t been confirmed can vote in state and local races, according to the Arizona Supreme Court.
Adrian Fontes, the Secretary of State, and Stephen Richer, a Republican Maricopa County recorder, disagreed on what status voters should hold. Richer called on the higher courts to decide after there was pushback on Fontes’ decision to give voters full ballots.
The higher court ended up agreeing with Fontes, and it said that county officials lack authority to change the status of voters, because they had registered to vote too long ago and had attested under penalty of law that they were citizens. The Justices also stated that the voters weren’t at fault for the database error and stated that there’s not much time before this year’s election.
Ann Scott Timme, the chief justice, said, “We are unwilling, on these facts, to disenfranchise voters en masse from participating in state contests.”
Many of the hundred thousand affected voters reside in Maricopa County, home to the city of Phoenix, and are longtime state residents from ages forty-five to sixty years old.
Arizona does consider a driver’s license issued after October 1996 as proof of citizenship, but a system coding error marked almost one hundred thousand people as full-ballot voters, according to state officials.
The number of voters could tip the scale in the state, where Republicans hold a majority in both chambers. The constitutional right to abortion is a main concern for many voters as well as a state law that would criminalize non-citizens for entering Arizona through Mexico without going through a port of entry.
Although Richer and Fontes disagreed over the status of the voters, they both were relieved by the court’s decision. “Thank God,” Richer said on X. Fontes said that the ruling was a “significant victory for those whose fundamental right to vote was under scrutiny.”
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