After Arizona’s 15 counties reached a settlement in a lawsuit involving state voter rolls, a Fox News headline sparked misleading social media posts about thousands of noncitizens.
“Kinda crazy that Arizona Democrats needed a lawsuit to force them to remove 50,000 noncitizens from voter rolls,” Rogan O’Handley, a conservative who uses the handle DC_Draino on X, wrote April 13, going on to accuse Democrats of election malfeasance.
His post included a pro-Donald Trump account’s screen grab of an April 13 Fox News headline that it described as “huge, monstrous, earthshaking news”: “SCOOP: Arizona to begin removing as many as 50K noncitizens from voter rolls following lawsuit.”
The original Fox News report misinterpreted what Arizona county election officials agreed to do as part of the legal settlement. Officials agreed to ask the U.S. Homeland Security Department to help verify the citizenship of people on their voter rolls whose citizenship has not been verified. Not all of those people are noncitizens, and the settlement did not include a commitment to remove thousands of people from state voter rolls.
Arizona’s 46,000 ‘federal only’ voters aren’t necessarily noncitizen or ineligible voters
Arizona’s constitution prohibits noncitizens from voting in elections, and only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections.
Sign up for PolitiFact texts
Arizona law requires voters to provide proof of citizenship when they register to vote. Valid proof includes an Arizona driver’s license, an Indian Census Number or Indian Affairs Card Number, or a legible copy of naturalization documents, birth certificate or U.S. passport.
Federal law, in contrast, requires only that a person registering to vote attest to their citizenship under penalty of perjury.
This means that people in Arizona who submit valid documentation of citizenship are “entitled to vote in all federal, state, and local elections in which they are eligible,” but people who only attest to citizenship are known as being “federal only” voters who can vote only in federal elections, according to the Arizona Secretary of State.
As of April 1, Arizona has 46,017 federal only registered active and inactive voters. That’s about 1% of the state’s 4.46 million registered voters.
Alex Gulotta, Arizona state director for All Voting Is Local, a voting rights advocacy organization, said Arizona’s “federal only” voters registered to vote under the same federal requirements as Texas’ 18 million registered voters, for example.
In December, Votebeat Arizona, a news organization that reports on voting issues, reported that federal only voters largely include people “living on Native land, on college campuses and at the state’s main homeless campus.”
“Many of these people are young people and or older snowbird people who may live in Minnesota part of the year and Arizona part of the year, but they don’t have an Arizona state driver’s license,” Gulotta said. An Arizona driver’s license is the easiest way to establish citizenship, he said.
Legal settlement: Arizona election officials agree to request federal help
In September, the conservative political advocacy group America First Legal, working on behalf of the civic action website EZAZ.org, sued all of Arizona’s 15 counties, alleging they failed “to take action to remove foreign citizens from their voter rolls.” The lawsuit argued that county election officials had “ignored” and “failed to perform” state and federal voter list maintenance requirements. It said officials didn’t use all available federal databases — including one from the Homeland Security Department — to help verify citizenship.
On April 8, the Maricopa County Recorder’s office, which led settlement negotiations, announced the parties reached an agreement. The statement said the office had “initiated communications” with the Homeland Security Department, seeking assistance in verifying “the citizenship status of registered voters who have not provided Documentary Proof of Citizenship.”
The parties’ April 9 dismissal notice said that the counties had “agreed to ask DHS to begin responding to requests” to help “verify the citizenship of each county’s federal-only voters.”
Fox News’ story said that the settlement meant county officials were starting “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.”
Sam Stone, Maricopa County Recorder’s Office spokesperson, told Votebeat Arizona that Fox News’ story was wrong.
Arizona counties did not agree to remove 50,000 noncitizens or 50,000 ineligible voters from its voter rolls. The settlement said only that counties would pursue an additional means to verify the citizenship of registered “federal only” voters.
As a result of the settlement, Stone said the counties were asking Homeland Security officials “to provide an additional way for county officials to check voter citizenship,” Votebeat Arizona reported.
In the days that followed, Fox News changed its story’s headline to, “Arizona to verify up to 50K people from voter rolls who failed to prove citizenship.” The start of the story now says the counties have started the process of “verifying and removing voters,” rather than “noncitizens.” The outlet also added an editor’s note: “This story has been updated to reflect that the AZ voters on the rolls under examination did not prove their citizenship at the time of registration.”
Fox News did not respond to PolitiFact’s request for information about what prompted the change.
Gulotta said that even cross-checking registered voters’ information with Homeland Security’s database wouldn’t necessarily determine if “federal only” voters are U.S. citizens. The database would only have citizenship information on people connected to the immigration system, such as green-card holders.
“If you were born on the Navajo Nation, you’re not in that database,” Gulotta said. “If you were born in the United States somewhere, you’re not in that database.”
With the settlement, county election officials agreed to try to verify citizenship another way, but Gulotta said assertions that 50,000 people who are not eligible to vote are being removed from voter rolls because of the lawsuit are “absolutely untrue.”
Our ruling
An X post said Arizona Democrats “needed a lawsuit to force them to remove 50,000 noncitizens from voter rolls.”
This mischaracterized what Arizona county election officials agreed to do as part of the legal settlement. Officials agreed to ask the U.S. Homeland Security Department to help verify the citizenship of people on their voter rolls whose citizenship has not been verified.
Not all of those people are noncitizens, and the settlement did not include a commitment to remove thousands of people from state voter rolls.
We rate this claim False.
