JUST IN: America First Legal Sues Arizona Secretary of State For Illegally Withholding Public Records on 218,000 Voters Without Proof of Citizenship – As Gateway Pundit Reported
America First Legal (AFL), on behalf of Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona, Inc., has filed a lawsuit against the Arizona Secretary of State’s office for withholding the list of 218,000 voters who were revealed to be registered without proof of citizenship.
“Secretary Fontes’s stubborn refusal to share the list of 218,000 registered voters is against the law. Today, AFL filed a lawsuit to force Secretary Fontes to follow the law and turn over these records immediately,” reads a press release from AFL.
The Gateway Pundit has reported extensively on this issue. What was first estimated by the state to be 98,000 voters approved without proof of citizenship on file was weeks later discovered to be more than double that amount. Roughly 218,000 voters across the state were registered without proof of citizenship due to a supposed glitch in the system that officials claim only affected voters who received an Arizona driver’s license before 1996. The Democrat Secretary of State further claims that the affected voters are mostly Republicans.
Despite knowing about the issue for more than a week, Arizona’s Secretary of State did not notify the public until Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer announced a staged lawsuit on September 17, less than two months before the election. The idea of a lawsuit was cooked up by Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, Governor Katie Hobbs, and Attorney General Kris Mayes during a September 10 phone conversation where the officials conspired to cover up the issue and minimize the blowback from the public. RINO Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer’s lawsuit was a plot cooked up by the Democrat officials who worried they would come under fire for removing the voters, who they claim are mostly Republicans, from the rolls or downgrading their ballot to federal races only.
Richer filed the lawsuit, asking that the court designate the voters as “federal only” voters and strip their ability to vote a full ballot with state and local races and ballot measures. Under state law, “federal only” voters cannot vote in local elections because they have not provided documentary proof of citizenship. However, the Arizona Supreme Court quickly ruled that the voters can vote on the full ballot this election.
As The Gateway Pundit reported, in this phone call, the officials also admitted that the glitch in the system—which has existed for at least 20 years—validates “theories about illegal voting in our elections” and makes every election since 2004 “challengable.”
Despite claims that the voters impacted by the statewide system error are legal citizens and mostly Republicans, the Secretary of State’s Office has not delivered the list of affected voters to County election officials or the Arizona GOP. We do not know which parties these voters are registered to or if they are even legal voters!
Read our latest report on the hundreds of thousands of potentially illegal voter registrations in Arizona:
America First Legal filed a public records request on September 17, the day that Stephen Richer announced his staged lawsuit against the state, asking the Secretary of State's office for the list of previously 98,000 voters lacking proof of citizenship on file. However, Secretary of State Fontes responded with a "bombastic tirade that invoked a bizarre conspiracy theory accusing EZAZ.org of secretly planning to harass the voters on the list," according to a press release from America First Legal. Attorneys representing the Secretary of State's Office further claimed that the requested information "has not yet been definitively gathered and the voters who would be included in that data have not yet been definitively ascertained," indicating that potentially more than 218,000 voters lack proof of citizenship.
"None of these excuses hold water," said America First Legal in their press release. "Fontes’s staff has already compiled the list–that’s how they know the number of affected voters. And there is no risk that these voters will be harassed–EZAZ.org’s mission is all about protecting voters."
America First Legal on Thursday announced their lawsuit on X:
There are 218,000 registered voters in Arizona who have never provided proof of citizenship.
For context, the margin of victory for the 2020 presidential race in Arizona was only 10,457 votes.
We just sued to obtain this list of voters… https://t.co/Gg59xU0SWY
— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) October 3, 2024
Press Release from America First Legal:
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Yesterday, America First Legal (AFL) filed a lawsuit on behalf of Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona, known as “EZAZ.org,” against Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and the Secretary of State’s Office for illegally withholding a list from the public of over 218,000 individuals who registered to vote without providing proof of citizenship as required by law.
Secretary Fontes administers Arizona’s system that performs statewide voter registration checks to determine if an individual has provided proof of U.S. citizenship, as required by Arizona law. On September 6, 2024, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer identified a flaw in the system that had allowed tens of thousands of individuals to register to vote even though they hadn’t provided proof of citizenship.
This flaw was revealed to the public when Recorder Richer filed an Emergency Petition in the Arizona Supreme Court on September 17. This lawsuit sought to prevent the affected voter registrants from voting in state and local races. As part of that lawsuit, Secretary Fontes confirmed that he had identified 97,928 registered voters who had been incorrectly marked because of the system flaw as having provided documentary proof of citizenship, even though they had never done so.
The Arizona Supreme Court ruled that these voters should not be moved onto the “Federal-Only” list but should be allowed to remain registered to vote in state and local elections. However, the Court also ruled that county recorders could continue to maintain voter lists to investigate whether these voters really were citizens.
Within hours of Recorder Richer filing his lawsuit on September 17, AFL filed a public records request on behalf of its client, EZAZ.org. The request asked Secretary Fontes to produce the list of every individual who had been unlawfully registered to vote.
However, Secretary Fontes declined the request through a letter written by his attorney. Rather than treating constituents with respect and decorum, their response was a bombastic tirade that invoked a bizarre conspiracy theory accusing EZAZ.org of secretly planning to harass the voters on the list. There is, of course, no evidence to support Secretary Fontes’s conspiracy theory, and EZAZ.org has no intention of harassing anyone. Secretary Fontes also feebly claimed that compiling the list would be too hard for his staff. None of these excuses hold water. Fontes’s staff has already compiled the list–that’s how they know the number of affected voters. And there is no risk that these voters will be harassed–EZAZ.org’s mission is all about protecting voters.
Arizona’s Public Records Law requires Secretary Fontes to produce this type of voter information for members of the public who request it, and Secretary Fontes’s Office regularly produces voter lists in response to such requests. In his denial, Secretary Fontes was unable to provide even one example of voter harassment caused by producing voter lists as part of a public records request.
Even worse than his denial of AFL’s records request, Secretary Fontes has refused to share the full list of affected voters with county recorders, making it impossible for them to check whether these individuals are citizens. Secretary Fontes’s refusal is puzzling because Arizona law requires county recorders to do monthly investigations on every registered voter who has failed to provide citizenship until the individual’s citizenship has been confirmed or disconfirmed.
On September 30, 2024, the Secretary announced that the problem was much bigger than he had disclosed to the Arizona Supreme Court. Specifically, he claimed to have discovered an additional “new set of approximately 120,000 Arizonans who may be affected by a data coding oversight within ADOT’s Motor Vehicle Division (MVD) and Arizona voter registration databases.” This means that the number of registered voters who have never provided proof of citizenship is 218,000. To put that in perspective, the official results for the presidential race in Arizona 2020 list the margin of victory as being only 10,457 votes.
Secretary Fontes’s stubborn refusal to share the list of 218,000 registered voters is against the law. Today, AFL filed a lawsuit to force Secretary Fontes to follow the law and turn over these records immediately.
Statement from Stephen Miller, America First Legal President:
“America First Legal continues to lead the fight for election integrity. We are suing the state of Arizona for refusing to provide the list of 218,000 voters who failed or refused to establish citizenship. It is absolutely imperative that we stop the dire threat of illegal alien voting, which is the gravest form of foreign election interference,” said Stephen Miller.
Statement from James Rogers, America First Legal Senior Counsel:
“There have been major failures in the administration of just about every general election in Arizona from 2016 until now. It’s no wonder that Arizonans’ trust in their electoral system is at an all-time low. And every time anyone expresses concern, how does Secretary Fontes react? Victim blaming. His patronizing response is always to attack voters for caring about the integrity of their system and expecting that public officials follow the law. But how can Arizonans trust their elections when the person in charge of administering them is so fervently opposed to basic transparency? That is not what Arizonans expect from their elected leaders. The law requires Secretary Fontes to produce these records, and AFL will work to hold him accountable until he does,” said James Rogers.
This is a developing story.
The post JUST IN: America First Legal Sues Arizona Secretary of State For Illegally Withholding Public Records on 218,000 Voters Without Proof of Citizenship – As Gateway Pundit Reported appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.