On Monday, Sept. 28, Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell announced that her investigators confirmed 52 of 60 voters flagged as possible noncitizens are U.S. citizens. The remaining eight are not citizens, though all live in the country legally, and every one of them voted in at least one county election between 2012 and 2025, she said.
The 60 came from a list of 207 registered voters that County Recorder Justin Heap sent to prosecutors earlier this year, after his office could not verify their citizenship with Motor Vehicle Division records and the federal SAVE database. The other 147 had never voted. Mitchell's office and the Arizona Attorney General's Office divided those cases, and both are still reviewing them.
What the investigation found
Mitchell, a Republican, said seven of the noncitizens obtained a first Arizona driver's license before Oct. 1, 1996, the date the state began requiring proof of citizenship for a license. When they later renewed, the MVD system treated them as having proven citizenship, and they ended up on the voter rolls.
The eighth person signed up in 2012 on a handwritten form that answered "no" to the citizenship question, Mitchell said.
According to Mitchell, five of the eight were unaffiliated, while two registered as Republicans and one as a Democrat, and investigators saw no sign the voters acted together. "Though our findings today would not change the outcome of any past election, every ineligible voter dilutes the vote of a citizen," Mitchell said.
She has not decided whether to seek charges; state law makes voting by a noncitizen a felony. She said her office will propose legislative fixes in January, including more training for MVD clerks and keeping license data apart from voter records.
How officials responded
Heap, also a Republican, called the result "a win for the integrity of our voter rolls and an example of the process working exactly as it should." His statement said state law required the referrals because his office "could not confirm their citizenship using the federal SAVE database or other records we have access to."
At a Board of Supervisors meeting this week, Supervisor Steve Gallardo criticized the "pretty harsh language" in the recorder's earlier press statements. Heap answered that his office is "not an investigative agency" and said it will keep using SAVE.
Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, said in a statement: "Today is a reminder that our election systems and safeguards are working. The claims of massive illegal voter fraud have once again been disproven." He has also said SAVE data "must be verified before it is ever used to disqualify a voter."
What local voters should know
The review involved Maricopa County's voter rolls. Residents in the Pinal County part of Queen Creek are registered through Pinal County, which was not part of this investigation.
