PHOENIX — The Arizona Secretary of State released data and emails to ABC15 Wednesday with names and information about 218,000 voters who may not have provided proof of citizenship required to register and vote a full ballot.
ABC15 received the documents though a public records request two days after a judge required the names be released to a citizens’ group which sued over access.
“The most frustrating thing to me is people saying, well, this proves that there's 200,000 illegals registered vote. No, that is not true,” said state Sen. Ken Bennett, R- Prescott, in an interview with ABC15 two weeks ago.
“I'm sure there's a lot of longtime Arizonans, born and raised in Arizona, or have been here for decades, like me, who might have been on that list because they were here prior to 1996 and had a driver's license,” said Bennett who also served as Arizona’s Secretary of State from 2009 to 2015.
ABC15 found Bennett’s name in the voter data released Wednesday. Bennett is an Arizona native, but he said he got his driver license and registered to vote prior to laws requiring documentation of status. Bennett said he didn’t remember being asked to provide the documentation when he later moved counties and updated his license and registration.
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Arizona's current secretary of state, county recorders, and other state agencies have already been working to verify names. Emails released to ABC15 show some of the affected voters’ names were compared with Arizona birth certificates.
County recorders also ran names against a federal database with immigration status information.
“I think county recorders have to be really careful to not disenfranchise voters who have done everything right, but because of an administrative error, are now being questioned,” said Ernest Herrera, an attorney from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Election officials have not reached out to the 218,000 voters yet, and the Arizona Supreme Court had ruled all affected voters could vote a regular ballot on November 5.
In the future, the voters, who can't be independently verified, may have to send in proof of citizenship, or they could be switched to a ballot only containing federal races. Federal-only ballots are an option for any Arizonan who attests to citizenship but doesn’t provide proof when registering to vote.
Proof of citizenship could be a birth certificate, driver's license, passport, tribal identity number, or an immigration number.
“I think this kind of sounds like a hassle for so many people that have to mail a form back, but I do believe everyone who is a citizen will be able to show that they're a citizen,” said Valley election attorney Kory Langhofer.
“I think there has to be an agreement about what we're going to do because we need to also safeguard the privacy of these individuals, so that they're not targeted in some way,” said ASU Law Professor Patty Ferguson-Bohnee.
Due to privacy concerns, ABC15 is not releasing the entire list of registered voters who may not have provided proper proof of citizenship due to the data error.
Election officials say they still need to work on uniform procedures for confirming citizenship before reaching out to the voters.
