2024 U.S. ELECTIONS RAPID RESEARCH BLOG
This is part of an ongoing series of rapid research blog posts and rapid research analysis about the 2024 U.S. elections from the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. This is crossposted on the CIP’s election rumor research Substack newsletter.
Key Takeaways
- The Maricopa County Recorder’s office discovered a flaw in the Arizona voter registration system where people who had obtained licenses before 1996 were mistakenly marked as having provided proof of citizenship when registering to vote.
- Arizona has a unique law that requires “documentary proof of citizenship” in order to vote in state elections.
- This announcement from the Recorder’s office led to misleading rumors that some voters who hadn’t proven their citizenship were on the rolls, implying they were non-citizens.
- The Arizona Supreme Court ruled that individuals impacted by the error could vote a full ballot in the 2024 election.
- This rumor contributes to an over-arching false narrative of mass non-citizen voting in the 2024 election.
The rumor and its background
On September 17, the Maricopa County Recorder’s office discovered a flaw in Arizona’s voter registration system, where 97,000 people who obtained licenses before 1996 were mistakenly marked as having provided proof of citizenship when registering to vote due to an issue in the state’s interface with the Division of Motor Vehicles. A subsequent announcement updated the count of voter records impacted — bringing the total to 218,000. These events incited rumors that used these announcements to misleadingly claim that voters who haven’t proven citizenship were on the rolls, implying that they were non-citizens.
As background, Proposition 200, a 2004 law, requires Arizonans to provide documentary proof of citizenship (DPOC) when registering to vote in state elections. Still, prospective voters can register to vote in federal elections without providing DPOC. Prop. 200 imposes stricter requirements for voter registration in Arizona than those required federally. The United States Supreme Court ruled that federal voter registration laws preempted Prop. 200 in 2013, reducing its applicability to Arizona’s state elections. Thus, when the system flaw came to light last month, Arizona election officials were faced with an open question about how to remedy it fairly.
Given the short time period between the flaw’s discovery and the 2024 elections, officials had to choose whether to permit the impacted voters to vote in both the federal and state elections or only permit them to vote in the federal election. The Supreme Court for the state of Arizona resolved the issue by allowing the impacted individuals to vote a full ballot in the 2024 election — including federal, state, and local races. After the 2024 election, they will be required to provide proof of citizenship to vote in future state elections.
The registration system error sparked online rumors questioning the security and integrity of the upcoming elections broadly, which have also been the basis for a lawsuit against the Secretary of State.
The misleading nature of the rumor and its impact
Rumors seized on the mistake and “incompetence” of officials as well as the ambiguity regarding the impacted individuals’ citizenship status to falsely suggest that the impacted voters are “illegal aliens.” Although these individuals’ citizenship status has not been documented to the extent required by Prop. 200, the majority are likely citizens. It is illegal under federal law and exceedingly rare for non-citizens to register or attempt to vote.
Some rumors also alleged that the failure to document proof of citizenship accurately was either an intentional “conspiracy” by Democrats to register voters without verified citizenship in an effort to win. These claims failed to consider that Republican and “Other Party” voters comprised larger shares of the impacted voters than Democrat voters.
Over the past few days, this rumor has continued to gain traction. America First Legal filed a lawsuit against the Arizona Secretary of State’s office on October 2, alleging that the office was withholding the list of impacted voters in violation of Arizona’s Public Records Law.
Figure 1: A graph showing the cumulative number of tweets related to rumoring surrounding the registration error from September 15 to October 8. Nodes are sized by the number of times the post was retweeted. The vertical increase in engagement began when the rumor was first publicly announced by the Maricopa County Recorder on X, with uptick after articles were shared about the error and leaked calls. The last uptick emerged after around October 3 when the suit was filed against the Arizona Secretary of State and quote-tweeted by Elon Musk.
Timeline
September 17
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer announces on X that an error was found impacting voters who received licenses before October 1, 1996, who had not provided DPOC to get a license. The Recorder’s Office filed a suit with the Arizona Supreme Court to get clarification on how to legally handle this for the 2024 election. The Secretary of State’s office releases a press statement committing to handle this.
September 18–20
The Secretary of State files a response on September 18, and on September 20, the Arizona Supreme Court rules that these impacted voters can vote in the 2024 presidential election.
September 28–29
A September 28 Washington Post article reports a leaked phone call in which state officials (Gov. Katie Hobbs, State Attorney General Chris Mayes, and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes) discussed what to do about the error. On September 29, the Gateway Pundit publishes an article that misleadingly frames this leaked call as proof that this was an intentional error by Arizona state leadership and that Richer’s discovery and suit was a retroactive legal cover for this plan. Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake amplified this claim on X (See Figure 2).
Figure 2: Screenshot of X post from Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake tweeting about the leaked call.
September 30–October 1
The Secretary of State’s office releases another press statement, updating the error count from 97,000 to 218,000 impacted voters. This revives the rumor and is picked up by accounts on X, which suggest the error is potentially intentional, or “malicious incompetence.”
October 2
America First Legal files a suit against the Secretary of State’s office, claiming it is illegally withholding from the public the names of impacted voters, in violation of Arizona’s Public Records law.
October 4–6
This claim of 218k unverified voters transfers to Telegram in English and Spanish, reviving the rumor on another platform and in another language, as well as bringing new features to it (see Figure 3).
Figure 3: Posted in a Telegram channel in Spanish, the message states that Arizona registers 218,000 unverified voters and that this is the work of China behind the scenes.
October 6–8
Far-right influencer Laura Loomer claims that Phoenix attorney Kory Langhofer, who had previously been involved with lawsuits trying to overturn the 2020 election results, had allegedly resigned after disputes with other Republicans for not wanting to file a suit over the error. As a result, Loomer calls him a “RINO” (Republican In Name Only).
This latter claim merged with rumors about the voters with missing citizenship documentation. This appears to have fueled a broader narrative that Arizona’s election system is both vulnerable to fraud and that Republicans do not have ideologically aligned lawyers who are amenable to litigating the RNC’s fraud allegations.
Conclusion
Ultimately, this error will not impact the ability to vote in this election — both state and federal — for registered voters implicated in the error. Furthermore, given that all of the impacted registrants meet federal voter registration requirements for proving citizenship status, the vast majority are likely citizens.
However, the allegations of voter fraud are linked to existing narratives questioning the legitimacy of Arizona’s 2020 and 2022 elections. Some of the discourse around this event also legitimizes false claims and rumors through incorporating them into formal lawsuits, a tactic we’ve observed previously. This rumor connects these themes to the narrative of non-citizen voting and lawsuits regarding election integrity, which have gained more attention over the past year.
PHOTO AT TOP: The Arizona state flag. Photo by Gage Skidmore / Flickr via CC BY-SA 2.0