DOJ letter threatens Arizona election officials with prosecution as Fontes calls it ‘intimidation’

The U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday sent a letter to the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office threatening to prosecute election officials who knowingly count the ballots of noncitizens or keep them on the voter rolls. 

A near-identical letter was sent to more than a dozen other states on Tuesday, ranging from Democrat-led Michigan to deep-red states like Georgia and Tennessee. 

In a three-page letter to Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon warned that any election official in the state, including him, could face criminal charges if they are aware a person is a noncitizen but still allows them to remain registered to vote, accepts their ballots or counts their votes. 

“Any election officer, including the chief election officer of the state, who knowingly retains noncitizens on the state’s (statewide voter registration list) or facilitates noncitizens in receiving and casting ballots could be subject to criminal liability,” Dhillon wrote. 

Attached to Dhillon’s message, which referenced multiple federal laws detailing punishments for election workers, was a four-page memo outlining the responsibilities of election officials under federal laws like the National Voter Registration Act and the Civil Rights Act. Dhillon requested a response from Fontes’ office within five days explaining how Arizona complies with federal election laws and how the DOJ can assist in meeting those requirements. 

In a written statement, Fontes denounced the letter as politically motivated and said it was “insulting” for election workers across the state.   

“Arizona election officials have always worked to ensure that only eligible citizens are registered to vote, and we will continue following Arizona law — not directions that come from political rhetoric or intimidation,” he said. 

Arizona has required proof of citizenship to register to vote since 2004, when voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure mandating the check to ensure noncitizens were not casting ballots. For nearly two decades, it was the only state in the U.S. with such a requirement.

Fontes, a Democrat, has long been at odds with the Trump administration over election security, refusing multiple times to turn over the state’s voter registration logs and arguing that doing so would violate federal and state privacy laws.

The DOJ’s letter is the latest effort from the Trump administration to drum up alarm over noncitizen voting, despite the fact that it is vanishingly rare and not a significant issue for the country’s election security. Research shows that when noncitizens do register to vote, it is often due to bureaucratic errors or a misunderstanding about a person’s eligibility. Instead, the Trump administration’s push to keep the focus on the issue is more of a product of its deportation agenda, and its efforts to cast doubts on election security – especially mail-in voting — ahead of this year’s midterms. 

Trump’s current priority is passing the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and ban mail in voting across the country. Among the president’s supporters in Arizona, Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap, a Republican, has helped advance the myth of mass noncitizen voting by referring 137 voter registrations for investigation to the county attorney’s office. But the federal database Heap used to identify those voter registrations has created false positives in other states. 

Arizona is among the states with the strictest voter registration processes. To vote in state and local elections, Arizonans must show proof of citizenship. The National Voter Registration Act prohibits doing the same for federal elections. During the 2022 election, only 22 allegations of voter fraud were referred for prosecution out of 3.4 million ballots cast — less than 0.001%. In the end, only two cases resulted in a criminal conviction and neither case involved a noncitizen.