Lawmakers in Arizona scrambled desperately to spin news of a massive voter-registration glitch that saw nearly 100,000 people included on voter rolls for decades without having provided proof of citizenship.
Audio of a phone call between Governor Katie Hobbs, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and Attorney General Kris Mayes was obtained by The Washington Post. The circumstances of the Post’s obtaining the audio are unknown.
Governor Hobbs called it an “urgent, dire situation” and Attorney General Mayes said he worried they would be accused of trying to rig the 2024 election.
“When this goes public, it is going to have all of the conspiracy theorists in the globe—in the world—coming back to re-litigate the past three elections, at least in Arizona,” Hobbs said.
“And it’s going to validate all of their theories about illegal voting in our elections, even though we all know that’s not true.”
The 40-minute phone call took place on 10 September. Initially, it was thought around 150,000 voters were affected, but the figure was revised to just under 100,000.
Although the voters affected included Democrats and independents, the biggest proportion were Republican.
The three officials engage in tense debate throughout the phone call over how to respond to the problem without disqualifying citizens who are eligible to vote and, perhaps most importantly for the administration, how to save face and avoid accusations of electoral impropriety.
Fontes, who spoke most during the conversation, said: “They’re going to beat us up no matter what the hell we do, no matter what the hell we say.”
A spokesperson for Fontes said on Saturday that voting by non-citizens is “vanishingly rare”. A spokesperson for the Governor said, “From the beginning of the call, Governor Hobbs knew no matter the path forward it was critical to get legal certainty for any action taken by the Secretary of State. She’s glad that approach has paid dividends and instilled bipartisan confidence in Arizona’s free, fair, and secure elections.” Attorney General Mayes declined to comment.
Arizona was the second closest state during the 2020 election, with Biden carrying the state by around 11,000 votes or 0.3%. Trump attributed his defeat in the state to widespread electoral fraud, including voting by non-citizens.
Many of the claims of voter fraud focused on Maricopa County, where a significant proportion of voting machines failed on election day. Voting machines in the county failed again during the 2022 midterm elections.
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