6,000 Arizona Voters Receive Wrong Ballot Due To Registration Error

Check your ballots, they may be incorrect.

Secretary of State Katie Hobbs confirmed Tuesday that a voter registration error caused up to 6,000 Arizona voters to get a vote by mail ballot with only federal races.

In a statement released by Hobbs, affected voters will receive a replacement correct ballot shortly. Hobbs is also the Democratic nominee for governor.

The voter registration process is that when someone registers to vote in Arizona or initiates a request to update their registration, the election system queries driver’s license records to confirm that the person has proven their citizenship. Those who don’t have citizenship documentation on file are not eligible to vote in state elections and are registered as “federal only” voters.

A spokeswoman the Arizona Secretary of State’s office said the driver’s license query failed to properly verify the citizenship for some people, leading them to be improperly registered as federal-only voters.

Federal-only voters has been a controversial issue since 2013 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in that Arizona cannot require documentary proof of citizenship for people to vote in national elections. The state’s response was to create two classes of voters, 1) residents who can vote in all races and 2) people who can only vote in federal elections.

Hobbs said in her statement that the database problem has been corrected.