PHOENIX — A 2023 state audit on Arizona Motor Vehicle Division oversight raises more questions about loopholes that could impact voter roll integrity.
State auditors found MVD officials failed to ensure authorized third-party companies consistently issued driver licenses and identification cards to qualified individuals. Looking at transactions for 2022, auditors found 10% of their sample did not include required documentation, and "might result in an individual being granted privileges they may not be entitled to."
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said he just learned of the audit Monday, and he was "disappointed" he was not alerted earlier about the implications.
"I don’t know what has been done to work on that and fix those issues, but that’s going to be part of our investigation because, obviously, that will have had some impact on our voter rolls," Fontes said.
Knowledge of the audit comes on the heels of last month's discoveries of administrative errors and data problems within the MVD impacting voter registration records. The misclassification of voters, with a driver's license issued before 1996, as providing documentation of citizenship even if they didn't.
For two decades voters have had to prove citizenship to participate in Arizona's state and local elections. Those who attested to citizenship, without providing documentation, are given a special ballot only allowing them to vote in federal races like president and Congress.
As of Monday, the Secretary of State's office had estimated that 218,000 registered voters may be missing citizenship documentation. In a Tuesday interview with ABC15, Fontes expressed more uncertainty on how many registrations could have integrity issues.
"What we know is we don’t know for sure," Fontes said. "The problem that we have is that we don’t know that we can depend on the data right now."
The Arizona Supreme Court ruled voters affected by the coding error will be allowed to vote a full ballot in November.
"This will not have any effect on the presidential race and vote count in Arizona," Fontes said. "Every person who is registered to vote in Arizona swears the exact same affirmation under penalty of perjury that every other American citizen in the country does, and even if they didn’t provide document proof of citizenship, they would still, according to the United States Supreme Court, be eligible to vote for president."
It's less clear how the voters with unverified citizenship could become a factor if there is a close state or local race where the results are contested.
Fontes said his office is investigating how the errors occurred and is looking for solutions.
"We have a lot of unanswered questions and that’s very uncomfortable this close to the election," Fontes said, "but transparency and truthfulness is always better than not talking about it and being accused of hiding things."
Fontes said voters with uncertain credentials will likely be contacted after the election and asked to provide additional documentation.
The Arizona Department of Transportation, which oversees MVD, dismissed the notion that the recent oversight lapses could bring additional voter integrity concerns.
"The Auditor General’s report and findings addressed specific issues that are separate from the issues regarding voter registration a few decades ago," an ADOT spokesperson told ABC15 in an email. "The Auditor General’s Report issued last year examined isolated clerical errors regarding document acceptance and/or scanning, not systemic."
