Arizona demands Maricopa County restore citizens’ voting registrations

Arizona’s attorney general sued Maricopa County to restore 25 voters’ registrations after they were falsely flagged as noncitizens.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday, comes eight months after Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap (R) ran more than 60,000 voters through a federal immigration database the Trump administration has converted into a faulty elections tool.

Heap and Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) have battled since then over whether he had the authority to pause voters’ registration. Arizona law requires county recorders to maintain a voter’s registration unless they have “affirmative evidence” of ineligibility.

Heap lacked that evidence, the lawsuit alleges, and 52 voters were later confirmed to be eligible U.S. citizens. Twenty-five of those voters, however, are still blocked from voting.

“Unless the 25 affected voters’ registration status is immediately restored, those voters will be denied their constitutional right to vote in the 2026 general election,” the complaint reads.

Arizona’s battle is the latest example of the errors rife in the Trump administration’s database, known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program. While designed to verify eligibility for government benefits, the Supreme Court allowed federal officials to continue using it for voter verifications.

When Texas used the SAVE database to identify 2,724 potential noncitizen voters last year, over 20% were later confirmed to be citizens. Federal officials similarly claimed nearly 16,000 Nevada voters were noncitizens based on the SAVE database, but after state officials questioned that figure, the department’s claim fizzled from 15,903 possible noncitizens to 185 and eventually to zero.

Mayes’ lawsuit asks the federal court for emergency relief since Election Day is less than two weeks away. 

“Recorder Heap’s nondiscretionary duty is clear here — and he is simply refusing to follow the law,” the complaint reads.