Arizona Supreme Court gives green light to 98,000 voters in limbo after glitch

Phoenix, Arizona: The Arizona Supreme Court has ruled that 98,000 voters whose citizenship status was previously in question due to a computer glitch will now be able to cast full ballots in the upcoming November election. These voters, who registered between 1996 and 2016, were affected by a 20-year glitch in the Arizona Motor Vehicle Division (MVD) system, which failed to properly record their citizenship status.

The glitch came to light when an employee in the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office discovered that some voters had been flagged as not providing proof of citizenship, even though they had valid driver's licenses.

Arizona considers drivers’ licenses issued after October 1996 to be valid proof of citizenship. However, a system coding error marked nearly 98,000 voters who obtained licenses before 1996 — roughly 2.5% of all registered voters — as full-ballot voters.

Under Arizona law, voters who haven’t proven their citizenship are typically only eligible to vote in federal elections, meaning they would have been restricted to a "fed-only" ballot, allowing them to vote only in federal races.

Republican party officials and Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes both agreed these voters should receive full ballots. The Arizona Supreme Court sided with this stance.