Appeals court says Arizona should release list of voters with unverified citizenship

PHOENIX — The Arizona Court of Appeals on Monday affirmed a decision by a lower court that required the Secretary of State’s office to release a list of tens of thousands of voters who were mistakenly classified as having access to Arizona’s full ballot because of a coding glitch.

The court rejected an appeal by Secretary of State Adrian Fontes’ office that sought to reverse the lower court’s order or at least suspend it. A group had sued in an effort to verify whether those on the list are in fact eligible to cast full ballots.

Arizona is unique among states in that it requires voters to prove their citizenship to participate in local and state races. Those who haven’t but have sworn to it under the penalty of law are allowed to participate only in federal elections.

The misclassification of voters from federal-only to full-ballot voters was blamed on a glitch in state databases involving drivers’ licenses and the Arizona Motor Vehicle Division.

Several tight races in the battleground state are expected to be decided by razor-thin margins. While the batch of about 218,000 potentially affected voters won’t impact the outcome of federal contests, they could influence tight state and local races.

Fontes’ office had initially denied a public records requests for the list of voters that was filed by America First Legal, a group run by Stephen Miller, a onetime adviser to former President Donald Trump. Fontes’ office cited concerns over the accuracy of the list and the safety of the voters included.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney ruled last week that the court received no credible evidence showing the information would be misused or encourage violence or harassment against the voters whose citizenship hasn’t been verified.

Blaney set a deadline of Monday for Fontes’ office to release a list of 98,000 voters and information Fontes relied on when announcing in early October that even more voters had been impacted — for a total of 218,000.