Skip to content
Project 2025
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories
Cash in a gas tak

Gas prices up again? What’s going on?

Redistricting

Are there hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants on Arizona’s voter rolls?

Person dropping off a ballot

An Arizona voter drops off a ballot at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center on Election Day 2022.

Eric Thayer for The Washington Post via Getty Images
Carmela Guaglianone, Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting
By Carmela Guaglianone, Arizona Center for Investigative ReportingSep 10, 2024
Carmela Guaglianone, Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting
See More Writings by author

This fact brief was originally published by the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. Read the original here. Fact briefs are published by newsrooms in the Gigafact network, and republished by The Fulcrum. Visit Gigafact to learn more.

Are there hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants on Arizona’s voter rolls?

No.

There is no evidence to suggest that thousands of undocumented immigrants are registered on Arizona’s voter rolls. Non-citizen voting has been found to be exceedingly rare.

The estimate was sourced from a legal complaint filed in federal court by a coalition of conservative groups and individuals, which accused Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes of inadequate voter roll maintenance. The estimate does not refer to undocumented immigrants on voter rolls, but rather voters who have moved or died but remain registered. Arizona’s Attorney General has filed a motion to dismiss the legal complaint, stating there is not sufficient evidence to back up the claim.

It is not uncommon for states to have surplus voters on their rolls. Federal law requires that states follow a sometimes years-long process to remove voters who have moved elsewhere or died.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

DocumentCloud United States District Court for the District of Arizona, Complaint against SOS Fontes

Democracy Docket United States District Court for the District of Arizona, Arizona Attorney General’s Motion to Dismiss

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

National Conference of State Legislatures Voter Registration List Maintenance

Brennan Center for Justice Attacks on Voter Rolls and How to Protect Them

Department of Justice The National Voter Registration Act Of 1993 (NVRA)

Government Publishing Office Public Law 107–252 107th Congress, Help America Vote Act of 2002ERIC, Inc. About

Latest news

screenshot of Steve Kornacki
Election 2024

How to win a bar bet on election night

Read More

Justice is blind statue symbolizing law with scales and sword in hands and a US flag in the background
SimpleImages/Getty Images

When lawyers attack the rule of law

Lawyers Defending American Democracy invites you to attend a free webinar, “When Lawyers Attack the Rule of Law,” on Wednesday, Sept. 18 at 2 p.m. Pacific (5 p.m. Eastern).

Please register for this important webinar.

Keep ReadingShow less
Rioters breach Capitol security Jan. 6

Rioters breached Capitol security and stormed the building Jan. 6 after attending a rally led by Donald Trump.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Is a presidential effort to overturn an election with force a new norm?

Nye is the president and CEO of the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress and a former member of Congress from Virginia.

In the aftermath of his election defeat in 2020, President Donald Trump attempted to overturn an American presidential election, challenging our institutions to respond. Most notably, on Jan. 6, 2021, the president rallied an assembled crowd to march to the Capitol to halt the certification of the election, the final constitutional step in the electoral process. Members of the crowd dutifully marched to the Capitol, where hundreds of them assaulted police, broke into the building and disrupted the certification proceedings.

By attempting to overturn an election by any extra-judicial means — pressuring his vice president to stop the certification and inciting a mob into violent action — the president attempted to stop the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in American history. Yet he remains a popular, if controversial, political figure, polling about even with his major party opponent in the 2024 presidential race.

This raises an important question: Did the country decide whether attempting to overturn an election by force is acceptable in our democracy?

Keep ReadingShow less
Person's hands holding prison bars
Victor de Schwanberg/Science Photo Library/Getty Images

America is guilty of over-incarceration

Cooper is the author of “How America Works … and Why it Doesn’t.”

A huge number of Americans — disproportionately those from underprivileged backgrounds — are trapped in a senseless system of mass incarceration. According to New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, “The United States has less than five per cent of the world’s population and nearly one-quarter of its prisoners. Astonishingly, if the 2.3 million incarcerated Americans were a state, it would be more populous than 16 other states. All told, one in three people in the United States has some type of criminal record. No other industrialized country comes close.”

But America doesn’t just imprison too many people. While incarcerated, people are often subject to terrible conditions. Long-time political prisoner Nelson Mandela once said, “No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito

Articles of impeachment have been filed againts Justices Clarence Thomas (left) and Samuel Alito (right).

Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Is the Supreme Court partisan?

Nelson is a retired attorney and served as an associate justice of the Montana Supreme Court from 1993 through 2012.

On June 10, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) introduced articles of impeachment against Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

The two resolutions were grounded in the justices’ alleged violation of multiple sections of the U.S. Constitution: Article III (federal judges entitled to hold office during “good behaviour”), Article II (federal judges to be removed from office by impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors). The resolutions also claim Thomas and Alito violated U.S. laws: ‘‘[a]ny justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned,’’ and requiring reporting of the source, description and value of gifts.

Keep ReadingShow less
Supreme Court
Wikimedia

The Supreme Court and the rule of law

Rikleen is executive director ofLawyers Defending American Democracy and the editor of “Her Honor – Stories of Challenge and Triumph from Women Judges.”

Events are now occurring at a breathtaking pace that leaves us in a perpetual cycle of breaking news and ramped-up emotions. Yet, within this maelstrom, our north star must be the rule of law — and protecting it when endangered.

The rule of law is endangered when a presidential candidate is nearly assassinated at his own rally by a 20-year-old armed with a semi-automatic rifle, whose accuracy killed a father shielding his family. It is further endangered by those who use this tragedy for political advantage, casting blame in the absence of a known motive as to why an unstable young man with access to a gun wreaked havoc on the country.

Each time the rule of law is weakened, our country becomes further at risk.

Keep ReadingShow less
© Copyright 2024