State officials sue Maricopa County recorder to restore 25 voters they say are citizens; hearing set for Friday

Arizona's attorney general and secretary of state have asked a judge to order Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap to give back voting rights to 25 people his office moved to "not eligible" status, saying investigators have since confirmed they are U.S. citizens. A hearing was scheduled for Friday morning, the Arizona Mirror reported.

Attorney General Kris Mayes and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, both Democrats, filed the lawsuit Wednesday, one day before Friday, the last day voters can ask for an early ballot for the Nov. 3 general election.

How the voters were flagged

According to the lawsuit as described by the Mirror, Heap's office ran voter records through SAVE, a federal citizenship-verification database that the Trump administration has overhauled to look for noncitizens on voter rolls and that has been found to flag some citizens wrongly. The office identified 207 voters it said were likely noncitizens and referred them to the Maricopa County Attorney's Office earlier this year.

Sixty of those 207 had voted, and the recorder's office moved them to the "not eligible" category. Unless they provide documented proof of citizenship, they cannot vote in the next election.

The county attorney's office concluded that just eight of the 60 were in fact noncitizens, and that no more than three had cast ballots in any one election, the Mirror reported. The attorney general's office reached similar findings. The suit says 25 of the voters whose citizenship both offices verified remain unable to vote this year.

One of them votes under the program for overseas and military voters.

Mayes and Fontes want the court to order the voters reinstated, to bar the recorder from requiring them to cast provisional ballots, and to stop the office from relying on the not-eligible designation to throw out any provisional ballots they cast.

The recorder's response

Heap's office called the lawsuit "partisan political theater." It said the county attorney's office advised it to cancel the registrations, and that it chose a suspended status requiring proof of citizenship "to give them every possible opportunity to vote a full ballot."

Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell disputed that account. "We never advised the Recorder to cancel the registration of voters," she said in a press release, adding that state law does not allow a suspended category for voters under investigation.

Sources

azmirror.com

12news.com