America First Legal is suing Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) for refusing to release a list of 218,000 voters who didn’t prove citizenship under a new 2004 State law. His excuse was this event occurred due to “a coding error”. Joe Biden won Arizona by only about 10,000 votes in 2020.
Last week, America First Legal (AFL) filed a lawsuit on behalf of Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona, known as “EZAZ.org,” against Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) and the Secretary of State’s Office for illegally withholding a list of over 218,000 individuals who registered to vote without providing proof of citizenship as required by law.
Secretary Fontes administers Arizona’s system which performs statewide voter registration checks to determine individuals have provided proof of US citizenship, as required by Arizona law. On September 6, 2024, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer (R) identified a flaw in the system which had allowed tens of thousands of individuals to register to vote even though they hadn’t provided proof of citizenship. Maricopa County contains the majority of Arizona’s population.
This flaw became known to the public when Recorder Richer filed an Emergency Petition in the Arizona Supreme Court on September 17. This lawsuit would prevent the affected voter registrants from voting in state and local races of 2024. As part of that lawsuit, Secretary Fontes confirmed that he had identified only 97,928 registered voters incorrectly registered because of the system flaw which showed they had provided documentary proof of citizenship, even though they had never done so.
The Arizona Supreme Court ruled these voters should not be moved onto the “Federal-Only” list but should be allowed to remain registered to vote in state and local elections. However, the Court also ruled that county recorders could continue to maintain voter lists to investigate whether these voters really were citizens.
Within hours of Recorder Richer filed his lawsuit on September 17, AFL filed a public records request on behalf of its client, EZAZ.org. That request asked Secretary Fontes to produce the list of every individual who had been unlawfully registered to vote.
Thereafter, Secretary Fontes declined this request through a letter written by his attorney. Rather than treating constituents with respect and decorum, their response was a bombastic tirade that invoked a bizarre conspiracy theory accusing EZAZ.org of secretly planning to harass the voters on the list. More Democrat stonewalling following the old adage, “The best defense is a strong offense.”
There is no evidence to support Secretary Fontes’ claim as EZAZ.org has no intention of harassing anyone. Secretary Fontes also claimed compiling such a list would be too hard for his staff. Fontes’s staff already has a compiled list and that’s how they know the number of affected voters. The public of Arizona and the country are seeing Fontes’ one lame excuse after another.
Arizona’s Public Records Law requires Secretary Fontes to produce this type of voter information for members of the public who request it, and Secretary Fontes’ Office regularly produces voter lists in response to such requests. In his denial, Secretary Fontes was unable to provide even one example of voter harassment caused by producing voter lists as part of a public records request.
Even worse than his denial of AFL’s records request, Secretary Fontes has refused to share the full list of affected voters with county recorders, making it impossible for them to check whether these individuals are citizens. Secretary Fontes’ refusal is puzzling because Arizona law requires county recorders to do monthly investigations on every registered voter who has failed to provide citizenship until the individual’s citizenship has been confirmed or disconfirmed.
On September 30, 2024, the Secretary announced the problem was much bigger than he had disclosed to the Arizona Supreme Court. Specifically, he claimed to have discovered an additional “new set of approximately 120,000 Arizonans who may be affected by a data coding oversight within ADOT’s Motor Vehicle Division (MVD) and Arizona voter registration databases.” This means that the number of registered voters who have never provided proof of citizenship is 218,000. To put that in perspective, the official results for the presidential race in Arizona 2020 list the margin of victory as being only 10,457 votes.
Secretary Fontes’s stubborn refusal to share the list of 218,000 registered voters is against the law. Last week AFL filed a lawsuit to force Secretary Fontes to follow the law and turn over these records immediately.
Statement from Stephen Miller, America First Legal President:
“America First Legal continues to lead the fight for election integrity. We are suing the state of Arizona for refusing to provide the list of 218,000 voters who failed or refused to establish citizenship. It is absolutely imperative that we stop the dire threat of illegal alien voting, which is the gravest form of foreign election interference.”
Statement from James Rogers, America First Legal Senior Counsel:
“There have been major failures in the administration of just about every general election in Arizona from 2016 until now. It’s no wonder that Arizonans’ trust in their electoral system is at an all-time low. And every time anyone expresses concern, how does Secretary Fontes react? Victim blaming. His patronizing response is always to attack voters for caring about the integrity of their system and expecting that public officials follow the law. But how can Arizonans trust their elections when the person in charge of administering them is so fervently opposed to basic transparency? That is not what Arizonans expect from their elected leaders. The law requires Secretary Fontes to produce these records, and AFL will work to hold him accountable until he does.”
CONCLUSION:
This story exploded across the Internet last week and was first reported by The New York Post. Most of the information of this story is from American First Legal. It is interesting how, once again, the mainstream media avoided this story completely.
“Conservative group sues Arizona secretary of state for voter list, citing citizenship concerns” – New York Post
What this story shares in common with so many other such similar stories around the nation is this “glitch”, “error”, “flaw”, etc., is occurring all too often to be a coincidence and in every instance it is to the benefit of the Democrat’s Party.
The process of voting is not rocket science, it is pretty simple. If the Democrats keep trying to make the process more complex than what it is, trouble is brewing.
The longer I live the more I agree with former President Donald J. Trump:
“Same day voting, with proper ID, on paper ballots!”
I would add, “Ballots with a proper chain of custody to allow the ballot to be traced back to its voter in the event of an audit.”
Copyright © 2024 by Mark S. Schwendau
