Update, April 15: Fox News deleted its story and published a new one late Monday with the headline “Arizona to verify up to 50K people from voter rolls who failed to prove citizenship.”This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.Arizona has not identified up to 50,000 noncitizens on its voter rolls, nor have counties begun canceling any voter registrations, despite news reports over the weekend suggesting otherwise.The misleading claims showed up in reports by Fox News and other outlets that mischaracterized a recent legal settlement between Arizona counties and the grassroots organization Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona, known as EZAZ.org.Sunday’s Fox News story carried the headline “Arizona to begin removing as many as 50K noncitizens from voter rolls following lawsuit.” It said that the settlement led to all counties beginning “the process of verifying and removing noncitizens from their voter rolls, including nearly 50,000 registrants who did not provide proof of U.S. citizenship.”“The story is wrong,” said Sam Stone, spokesperson for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, which led settlement negotiations on behalf of all 15 counties.What county officials are doing as a result of the settlement, Stone said, is asking the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to provide an additional way for county officials to check voter citizenship.Counties are not yet sharing voter information with DHS. Maricopa County will not do so unless it can submit the information securely and ensure that the citizenship checks are accurate, Stone said.The settlement involves a case in which the conservative group America First Legal sued Arizona counties on behalf of EZAZ.org, claiming that election officials were not using all available databases to check voter citizenship, as required by state law. The settlement required counties to send a letter to DHS expressing their intent to submit voter information to get help checking citizenship; reminding the agency of its obligation under federal law to share database information with states; and requesting information about how to submit the voter information, said Merissa Hamilton, founder and chairwoman of EZAZ.org.Still, Republican leaders such as Kari Lake, the State Department aide and 2024 Arizona Senate candidate, seized on the Fox report to claim that large numbers of noncitizens were voting in Arizona. Lake posted on the social media platform X that “it’s a pyrrhic victory knowing Arizona had to be sued into submission before agreeing to follow the law, & take upwards of 50K illegal voters off its rolls.”Fox News and Lake did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Fox News headline still appeared on its website with the same language as of midday Monday.Election officials in Arizona counties already check a person’s citizenship in multiple ways under state laws that require proof of citizenship to register to vote in state and local elections.Only a handful of other states have passed such laws requiring proof of citizenship for registering to vote. Federal law requires only that a voter attest to their citizenship — under penalty of perjury — by checking a box on their voter registration form.President Donald Trump’s recent executive order on elections, as well as the SAVE Act, which passed the U.S. House last week, call for requiring citizenship proof nationwide.In Arizona, around 49,000 active or inactive voters are eligible to vote only in federal elections because they did not prove their citizenship. Another 200,000 longtime residents will need to verify their citizenship status in the coming months because they were affected by a state error in tracking citizenship that was disclosed last summer.Stone said most of these voters are likely U.S. citizens who simply haven’t submitted the necessary documents.There’s no national database of U.S. citizens, so county officials in Arizona currently check driver’s license numbers, birth certificates, immigrant IDs and other documents to verify citizenship. The Department of Homeland Security can verify the citizenship status of potential voters individually, Stone said, but isn’t set up to check large groups of voters at once.The request from Arizona county officials to the federal agency “is really for the creation of a system that would allow for an accurate comparison between county databases,” Stone said.Trump’s executive order also called for DHS to share database information with states upon request.America First Legal’s news release about the settlement between the counties and EZAZ.org did not imply that Arizona had 50,000 noncitizens on its voter rolls.James Rogers, senior counsel for America First Legal, wrote in the release that the settlement will help recorders “find and remove any aliens on their voter rolls.”“It will also potentially enfranchise federal-only voters whose citizenship is confirmed,” Rogers wrote, “which would allow them to vote in State and local elections.”Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at [email protected] is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.
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