Cameron Henderson
02 October 2024 4:47pm
More than five per cent of people registered to vote in Arizona may not be citizens, officials fear.
Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s secretary of state, announced on Sunday that a ballot blunder could involve 218,000 potential voters – with the problem thought to affect more Republicans than Democrats.
It comes after state election officials discovered earlier this month that many residents in the key battleground state have been registered to vote for decades, despite there being no record of them having provided proof of citizenship.
Under state law, voters are required to provide proof of citizenship, such as a US birth certificate. The policy was introduced 20 years ago in an attempt to prevent rare instances of voting by non-citizens.
However, due to a computer glitch, when residents applied for new driver’s licences, the state’s computer system automatically indicated to election officials that they had provided citizenship documents even though there is no record that they had.
Details of the extent of the problem come just days before early voting begins in Arizona on Oct 9.
Vice president Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump are currently neck and neck in the state – one of seven likely to swing November’s election.
The latest average polling data from 538 puts Trump 1.5 percentage points ahead of Harris, with 48.3 per cent of the vote to her 45.8 per cent.
There are estimated to be 4.1 million people registered to vote in Arizona.
The controversy over voter registration will likely add fuel to false claims that non-citizens around the country are gearing up to cast their ballots in the election.
During a call on Sept 10, the Arizona governor, secretary of state and attorney general raised concerns about election “conspiracy theorists” weaponising the situation, according to a leaked recording obtained by The Washington Post.
“When this goes public, it is going to have all of the conspiracy theorists in the globe — in the world — coming back to re-litigate the past three elections, at least in Arizona,” Katie Hobbs, the Democratic governor, said. “And it’s going to validate all of their theories about illegal voting in our elections, even though we all know that’s not true.”
Arizona became the subject of scrutiny in the wake of the 2020 election after 11 Republicans were indicted for spreading false allegations of voter fraud taking place in the state.
At the time, Trump falsely claimed that more than 200,000 ballots were either printed on “illegal paper”, falsified or added to the voter roll after the election.
Although election voting by non-citizens is extremely rare, according to election experts, Trump supporters have demanded stricter laws to prevent it from happening.
House Speaker Mike Johnson previously warned that non-citizen voting presents a “clear and present danger” in November’s election.
The post More than 5pc of people registered to vote in Arizona may not be citizens appeared first on The Telegraph.
