Did Arizona election officials register nearly 100,000 non-citizens to vote? 

Arizona election officials recently discovered a data-coding issue that mistakenly classified more than 200,000 voters as having furnished proof of citizenship when it was unclear whether they’d actually done so. No evidence suggests these voters are non-citizens. Non-citizen voting in the United States is extremely rare.

Arizona is the only state that requires prospective voters to prove they are citizens. Those who don’t receive limited “federal-only” ballots, which don’t include state and local races.   

Driver’s licenses issued after October 1996 are considered valid proof of citizenship under Arizona law. The voters in question are longtime residents who obtained licenses before 1996.

Arizona’s Supreme Court ruled the affected voters can receive full ballots in November, noting that it was unclear whether the individuals had proved their citizenship prior and hesitating to disenfranchise them based on a government error. 

Affected voters will need to prove citizenship before voting in subsequent elections. 

This fact brief responds to conversations such as this one. 

Editor’s note (10/1/24): The number of voters affected by this coding error has been updated to reflect a higher estimate released by the Arizona Secretary of State.

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