Have Arizona election officials refused to remove non-citizens from voter rolls?

Arizona’s voter roll maintenance procedures, which county recorders and the Secretary of State are responsible for implementing, include processes for verifying citizenship. There is no evidence to suggest that non-citizens remain on voter rolls, and non-citizen voting in the United States is extremely rare. 

Arizona’s maintenance procedures include several measures for verifying citizenship, including resources from a multi-state voter information database, the Electronic Registration Information Center, and correspondence with the county jury commissioner’s office. 

Conservative groups have recently put pressure on election officials to explicitly verify the citizenship of all federal-only voters and have sued Arizona’s 15 county recorders for allegedly failing to fulfill this duty. The state’s attorney general has disputed a related legal complaint. 

Arizona is the only state with federal-only ballots, which require voters to provide proof of citizenship documents to register in state and local elections. Most federal-only voters are Native Americans, students or seniors. 

This brief responds to conversations such as this one. 

The Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs, or quick-response fact checks, about trending claims relating to Arizona.