HB 2038
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ARIZONA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Fifty-seventh Legislature
First Regular Session
House: FMAE DPA/SE 4-3-0-0
HB 2038: technical correction; accountants; investigations
S/E: voter registration; citizenship proof
Sponsor: Representative Kolodin, LD 3
House Engrossed
Overview
An emergency measure that establishes the procedure a County Recorder must follow if they
receive or received information that a registered voter who filled out a state voter registration
form has not provided satisfactory documentary proof of citizenship.
History
DPOC, AVID & MVD
When a person registers to vote in Arizona, they must submit documentary proof of
citizenship (DPOC) under state law. DPOC can include an applicant's driver license number,
a photocopy of an applicant's birth certificate or a photocopy of pertinent pages of an
applicant's U.S. passport. If a voter fails to satisfy this requirement, but they are otherwise
eligible to register, and the registrant certifies under penalty of perjury that they are a United
States citizen, then they are registered as a federal only voter. Federal only voters are only
eligible to vote in federal elections, like for President of the United States.
A person may provide their Arizona driver license number when registering to vote, since
United States citizens would have already submitted DPOC to the Motor Vehicle Division
(MVD) when applying for their driver license. However, this only applies to Arizona driver
licenses issued after October 1, 1996, since prior to this date the MVD did not necessarily
require such documents nor log that such documents were submitted.
The Access Voter Information Database (AVID) serves as Arizona's statewide voter
registration database. When a county enters a voter’s registration application into AVID, the
database queries the person's license records through an interface with the MVD database.
A person's regular, non-foreign type driver license that was issued after October 1, 1996, is
considered valid DPOC. Assuming an applicant meets all other voter registration
requirements, the county would register the applicant as a full ballot voter upon confirmation
of this information (A.R.S. § 16-166, Prop. 200, Arizona v. Inter-Tribal Council of Arizona).
2024 Data Coding Oversight
In September of 2024, the Arizona Secretary of State announced that his office had discovered
a data coding oversight in the MVD and AVID databases. It was later discovered that this
oversight affected approximately 218,000 voters. Following a petition for special action filed
by the Maricopa County Recorder with the Arizona Supreme Court, the court issued an
opinion that the affected voters, originally believed to be 98,000 voters, should receive full
ballots for the 2024 general election. The Secretary of State later announced that an
☐ Prop 105 (45 votes) ☐ Prop 108 (40 votes) ☒ Emergency (40 votes) ☐ Fiscal Note HB 2038
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additional 120,000 Arizona voters may be affected by this oversight, bringing the total
number of affected voters to 218,000. The Secretary of State indicated in a press release that
the Supreme Court's decision stands and applies to the additionally discovered registrants
(Richer v. Fontes (2024), September 30 SOS Press Release).
Provisions
1. Instructs a County Recorder that receives or has received information from the MVD that
a registered voter used the state voter registration form and has not provided satisfactory
DPOC, to provide notice to the voter within 60 days that includes specified information.
(Sec. 1)
2. Instructs the County Recorder, if a voter who is required to provide satisfactory DPOC
per this measure fails to timely do so, to:
a) change the voter's registration status to not registered, if the voter does not timely
provide satisfactory DPOC; and
b) cancel the voter's registration if, after the next general election, the voter has not
provided satisfactory DPOC. (Sec. 1)
3. Repeals this measure on January 1, 2027. (Sec. 1)
4. Contains an emergency clause.