The registration status for a huge number of voters in Arizona is on uncertain footing in the wake of last fall’s election. Thanks to a quirk in Arizona state law, it’s unclear which elections these voters are allowed to vote in.
The situation has created serious headaches for county recorders, who have been lobbying the state for some clarity on this.
Jen Fifield, a reporter at VoteBeat, who’s been covering the whole mess and joined The Show to discuss.
Full conversation
SAM DINGMAN: Jen, good morning.
JEN FIFIELD: Good morning. Thanks for having me on.
DINGMAN: Thank you for being here. So let's start by clarifying the issue here. This is a group of voters who, it seems like through no fault of their own, are in a unique situation. Tell us what's going on.
FIFIELD: Yeah, and so these are residents who have lived here since at least 1996. I want to make that clear. Most everyone thinks that these are citizens. These are people who just were never asked to prove their citizenship when they registered to vote. And so these are people who've been in the state for decades and now they're saying we actually have proof of your citizenship and in Arizona you need that to vote in state and local elections.
And so now as we try to figure out what to do, the proposal is to kick them off the rolls entirely of the voter rolls if they don't provide this citizenship proof by 2026.
DINGMAN: And so this proposal is a proposed piece of legislation, correct? And that's in reaction to a group of county recorders who have been trying to figure out how to proceed.
FIFIELD: Right, so we have mostly Republican recorders in the state who are in agreeance that this may be the way that we need to move forward. Now this wasn't the proposal at first, and when this problem with the citizenship was discovered this summer, it was thought, OK, we're going to allow them to provide their citizenship. If they don't, we're just going to let them vote in federal elections like other voters who have not yet proved citizenship.
Now the idea is we're going to kick them off the rolls entirely. This seems to be getting caught up in the nationwide focus on nationwide focus on proof of citizenship and all the politics involved with proving citizenship to vote when we know that these are longtime voters, longtime residents who, like you said, it's not their fault that they didn't provide their citizens yet. So there is a bit of disagreement on how to move forward and the Secretary of State's Office is saying do not kick them off the rolls.
DINGMAN: Yes, well, I'm glad you brought up the Secretary of State's Office because if I'm not mistaken from your reporting, it seems like initially the recorders approached the Secretary of State's Office for some guidance and did not necessarily get a clear sense of how to proceed.
FIFIELD: The Secretary of State Adrian Fontes has always said that he likes to leave these kind of decisions up to counties. It might be also a legal strategy that, you know, if now the counties are sued, that's they're making their own legal decisions on how to move forward. But the secretary of state did step in when he saw this new proposal to kick them off the rolls, and his office said, “Wait, wait, wait, what are we doing here? Don't do that. These are You know, we know who these voters are and if they don't provide citizenship, at least make them federal only voters.”
DINGMAN: Now some folks listening to this may be thinking to themselves, Wait a minute, I thought we talked about this last fall. So give us the context there. The state Supreme Court issued a ruling on this back in September, and at the time it seemed like everybody was kind of on the same page. So what's changed?
FIFIELD: That's right. Before the election, it was, you know, just a few months before ballots went out or even a month before they went out. Everyone just said let's hold off on this issue until after November. We don't want these longtime residents who are probably citizens to just suddenly find that they're not able to cast a ballot in the presidential election.
But since then, as you know, you know, there's been a lot of national talk about proof of citizenship. There's a lot of pressure on Republicans in the state to act certain ways, and I think that might be playing into what's happening here now where there's differing opinions, you know, no matter what, I see this going to the court in some way if we don't get a standard approach moving forward.
DINGMAM: And one of the reasons that it's, it's tricky to kind of parse all this right has to do with a 2022 law which has created some confusion here about whether the regulations apply to newly registered voters or to these several 100,000 voters who, as you said, have been on the rolls for much longer, right?
FIFIELD: Right, it's so hard to talk about this and simplify it, but basically our state laws, there's so many new state laws too on proof of citizenship, and one of them that is now in effect or is in the courts, we'll see if it goes into effect, says you can't become a full ballot voter, you can't become a voter at all if you don't provide proof of citizenship using the state registration form. So it's based on what you use to register to vote. That's causing Or the mix up and more the confusion on how to move forward here.
DINGMAN: And just to be clear, Jen, Secretary of State Fontes's Office has, since the dust up about all this, formally sent a letter trying to clear up their stance on how we should proceed. What is their position?
FIFIELD: Their position is if these voters don't provide the proof of citizenship by 2026, then maybe we should make them federal only voters like others in the state who have not provided that proof, which means they would be able to vote for president, for Congress, but not for things like governor and local races.
I do want to also clarify that you do have to be a citizen everywhere to vote. Even in federal elections, and you have to attest to that under a penalty of perjury, you have to check something when you register saying I am a citizen. These voters have done that already, so I just want to be clear about that because some people say, Wait, wait, wait, I thought you did have to be a citizen to vote in any kind of election.
DINGMAN: And just about 30 seconds left here, Jen, what's the urgency on this?
FIFIELD: Well, I mean, some, some counties have elections in next month. Some have them in May. Some have we might have a statewide election, probably not this year, but we need to figure this out pretty quickly here.
