Mayes, Fontes sue Maricopa recorder to restore voting rights of 25 wrongly flagged as noncitizens

Arizona’s top election official and attorney general are asking a judge to force Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap to reinstate the voting rights of 25 people who were falsely flagged as noncitizens by a database created by the Trump administration. 

The lawsuit, filed by Attorney General Kris Mayes and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, comes the day before the deadline for voters to request an early ballot. Voters have until Oct. 23 to request an early ballot. 

“Absent this Court’s prompt intervention, the twenty-five Affected Voters will be illegally denied their right to vote in the November 3, 2026 general election,” the two Democrats wrote in a lawsuit filed Wednesday. “The Recorder has refused to voluntarily undertake his statutory duty, so must be ordered to do so.” 

SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX.

At the heart of the matter is the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, or SAVE, a tool that has been overhauled by the Trump administration to look for instances of non-citizens registered to vote. It has been found to falsely flag U.S. citizens as non-citizens. 

Heap used the database and flagged 207 voters he said were likely noncitizens, sending those voters information to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office earlier this year. Of those 207 flagged, 60 had cast ballots and Heap moved those voters to the “non eligible” category, according to the lawsuit.  

That designation means that, unless those voters provide documented proof of citizenship before the next election, they will be unable to vote. 

However, a review of those 60 voters by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office found that only eight of them were actually noncitizens, and no more than three ever voted in the same election. The Attorney General’s Office made similar findings. 

Now, 25 of those 60 who had their voter registration canceled — but whose citizenship was verified by both MCAO and the AG’s Office — are unable to vote in this year’s election, according to the complaint. 

Heap’s office called the lawsuit “partisan political theater” and claimed the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office advised his office to cancel the registrations. The Recorder’s Office said it chose to place them in a suspended registration status requiring them to provide proof of citizenship “to give them every possible opportunity to vote a full ballot.”

MCAO refuted Heap’s characterization of events. 

“The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office follows the law,” Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell said in a press release. “Therefore, contrary to the Maricopa County Recorder’s October 22nd press release, we never advised the Recorder to cancel the registration of voters.” 

Mitchell went on to say that Arizona law “does not allow for the placement of the voter in any sort of suspended category” while under investigation by MCAO and the AG, adding that the law also does not “allow for the County Attorney to stand in place of the Recorder to gather proof of citizenship.” 

“This is not my opinion. This is not a made-up process. This is the law,” Mitchell said. 

A hearing is now scheduled for Friday morning to hear arguments from Mayes and Fontes, who are asking the court to not only force Heap to reinstate the voters, but also bar his office from requiring them to vote a provisional ballot. And, they told the court, if those voters are forced to vote a provisional ballot, Heap should not be able to use the “not eligible” status to reject the ballots and not count them. 

One of the impacted voters is also part of the UOCAVA system, which serves overseas and military voters, according to the lawsuit. 

The lawsuit argues that Heap violated state law by canceling the registration of the voters before any of them were proven to be or not be United States citizens, and that Heap’s office has not responded to letters and requests for his office from the AG. 

“Not only does the Recorder lack affirmative evidence of noncitizenship, the AGO and MCAO investigations obtained unrefuted evidence that those fifty-two registered voters are in fact U.S. citizens,” the lawsuit says. “In view of this information, Plaintiffs expected that Recorder Heap would immediately restore those voters to the status they had before he unlawfully changed their status to ‘Not Eligible.’”

SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE

Courtesy of Arizona Mirror