by Jason Hopkins
America First Legal on Thursday announced a lawsuit against Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes for refusing to hand over the names of over 200,000 registered voters who have allegedly not provided proof of citizenship.
Fontes is breaking the law by refusing to comply with a records request that demands the names of roughly 218,000 individuals who are registered to vote, but did not provide proof of citizenship, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit comes just weeks before Election Day, with former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris remaining in a dead heat in the state.
“America First Legal continues to lead the fight for election integrity,” Stephen Miller, America First Legal president and former senior advisor in the Trump administration, said in a press release. “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,” Miller continued.
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer identified in September a glitch in the voter roll system that marked more than 97,000 registered voters as having provided documentary proof of citizenship — which is required under Arizona law — even though these individuals had not done so. Richer filed an Emergency Petition in the Arizona Supreme Court on Sept. 17 in order to prevent these voter registrants from participating in local and state elections.
Fontes announced Monday that his office had discovered an additional “set of approximately 120,000 Arizonans who may be affected by a data coding oversight within [the Arizona Department of Transportation’s] Motor Vehicle Division and Arizona registration databases.”
The recent disclosure puts the total number of registered voters in the state who allegedly did not provide proof of citizenship up to roughly 218,000. The 2020 presidential election in Arizona was decided by a margin of less than 11,000 votes.
Immediately after Richer’s lawsuit, America First Legal filed a public records request asking the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office to hand over the list of all individuals who had unlawfully registered to vote, according to a press release from the organization. Fontes denied the request, alleging that disclosure of the names would lead to their harassment and that compiling the list would be too burdensome for staff.
America First Legal argues that Arizona’s public records request laws require Fontes to produce this type of information when requested.
“There have been major failures in the administration of just about every general election in Arizona from 2016 until now,” stated James Rogers, America First Legal senior counsel. “And every time anyone expresses concern, how does Secretary Fontes react? Victim blaming.”
“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,” Rogers continued.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona, also known as “EZAZ.org.”
Fontes did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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Jason Hopkins is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Adrian Fontes” by Arizona Secretary of State.
