Mayes Concedes to Heap and Settles, Provides Proof of Citizenship
Updated: 6 hours ago
For four weeks, Attorney General Kris Mayes refused to provide the citizenship verification Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap requested. On October 23, 2026, she presented that documentation in court and dismissed her lawsuit. All 24 voters have been restored.
MARICOPA COUNTY — Recorder Heap summed it up: "We stood firm, did our duty, and upheld Arizona law."
Arizona's citizen-only voting rules are under pressure again. Attorney General Mayes and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes filed a special-action mandamus lawsuit against Heap. They asked a court to order him to immediately restore full voting status, and mail ballots, to about two dozen voters his office had placed in "Not Eligible" or pending Documentary Proof of Citizenship (DPOC) status. The suit did not require Heap to receive the actual proof of citizenship those voters would normally need under Arizona law. Critics called it a backdoor effort to weaken the state's long-standing DPOC requirement. On October 23, the Attorney General dismissed the complaint after citizenship documentation was presented to the court.
How Arizona's Proof-of-Citizenship Rule Works
Since voters approved Proposition 200 in 2004, Arizona has required people registering to vote to provide satisfactory evidence of U.S. citizenship (A.R.S. § 16-166(F)).
• The most common proof is an Arizona driver's license or ID issued after October 1, 1996, when the state began requiring proof of lawful presence for licenses.
• Voters who don't provide acceptable proof can be limited to federal-only ballots.
• Registrants also swear they are citizens under penalty of a Class 6 felony.
A 2024 systems error complicated this. Arizona's voter registration system treated some driver's licenses first issued before October 1, 1996, but later reissued or duplicated, as post-1996 licenses. Roughly 100,000 to 200,000 already-registered voters were marked as having provided proof of citizenship when the underlying records didn't clearly support it.
In Richer v. Fontes (September 2024), the Arizona Supreme Court let these "Affected Voters" cast full ballots in the 2024 election. The Court noted the problem came from a state administrative error and that most of them had sworn to their citizenship under penalty of perjury. It also observed that Arizona law has no clear way for a recorder, years after registration, to strip a voter's full-ballot eligibility solely because of that coding error.
AG Opinion I25-007: Mayes Narrows the Proof Requirement
In August 2025, at Secretary Fontes's request, Mayes issued Opinion I25-007. It concludes that county recorders have no legal authority to cancel or downgrade Affected Voters' registrations just because of the MVD coding error.
• Recorders must keep existing full-ballot status unless they have "affirmative evidence" that a specific voter is not a citizen.
• Recorders may ask for proof, but a voter's silence or failure to respond doesn't allow cancellation or a switch to federal-only status.
• Only affirmative evidence of non-citizenship starts the notice-and-cancellation process under A.R.S. § 16-165(A)(10).
In practice, the opinion treats a missing proof record, created by a state systems error, as no reason to require the very evidence Arizona law has demanded since Proposition 200. It puts keeping full-ballot status ahead of enforcing the proof standard for a large group of long-registered voters.
That fits a broader pattern in how Mayes reads citizen-only voting laws. Her brief to the U.S. Supreme Court defended Arizona's 2022 proof-of-citizenship laws only in part. It preserved the effects of a 2018 settlement that turned incomplete state forms into federal-only registrations and left the 2022 laws' cleanup provisions unaddressed, so the laws never fully operated in practice.
Recorder Heap's SAVE Review and "Not Eligible" Status
In early 2026, Heap ran about 61,681 Affected Voters through the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system.
• He announced about 137 non-citizens registered to vote, including about 60 who had cast ballots.
• He referred a larger group of 207 people to the Maricopa County Attorney's Office for investigation.
• He placed the flagged voters in "Not Eligible" or pending proof status.
Under the Elections Procedures Manual, "Not Eligible" is normally used for new registrants in specific situations, such as certain MVD non-citizen flags or pending naturalization checks, not as a long-term hold on already-registered voters.
In an April 10, 2026 letter to the Attorney General's Office, Heap explained that no cancellations had happened yet, so the referral trigger in § 16-165(A)(10) hadn't been met. He said the voters would stay ineligible through the November 2026 election unless they provided acceptable proof by 7 p.m. on Election Day. The Attorney General's Office said his approach violated the statute and the manual and that he had to make criminal referrals. Heap later referred the cases to the Attorney General's Office as well.
The Investigations and the Lawsuit
County Attorney Rachel Mitchell's office and the Attorney General's Office investigated the 60 referred voters who had voted. On September 28, 2026, Mitchell reported that eight were lawfully present non-citizens and the other 52 were U.S. citizens. The Attorney General's Office noted that 22 of the 60 had Arizona birth records. Heap restored about half of the confirmed citizens to Active status. When the lawsuit was filed on October 21, about 24 to 25 confirmed citizens were still in pending or "Not Eligible" status. Some were on the Active Early Voting List, and one was a military or overseas (UOCAVA) voter.
Mayes and Fontes filed a verified complaint for special action and mandamus relief. They argued that Heap had no affirmative evidence these voters were non-citizens, that the investigations had confirmed their citizenship, and that "Not Eligible" didn't apply to long-registered voters whose MVD records showed no non-citizen status. They asked the court to order Heap to restore each voter's prior status immediately, mail early ballots to those entitled to them, and give regular (not provisional) ballots to anyone voting in person. They relied on Richer and Opinion I25-007.
An Order to Show Cause hearing was set for the morning of October 23 before Judge Adele Ponce. The last day to mail early ballots was the day after the suit was filed, and Election Day is November 3.
Heap's Position: Show the Documents
Heap responded that Arizona law requires recorders to get documented proof of citizenship. His office asked for the evidence the Attorney General's and County Attorney's offices used to conclude the voters were citizens, and he said he would restore full-ballot status the moment those documents arrived. He called the lawsuit "political theater" and said no attorney general can declare Arizona's citizenship requirements optional. "A press conference is not proof of citizenship. Neither is a lawsuit."
The Outcome: Documents Presented, Lawsuit Dismissed
On October 23, after court-ordered mediation and the presentation of citizenship documentation to the court, Mayes dismissed the complaint. The Recorder's Office announced that the four-week dispute was resolved once "legally sufficient citizenship verification" was provided, following repeated requests to the County Attorney's Office.
Mayes and some Maricopa County supervisors quickly called it a win for the Attorney General.
• Mayes posted that "after successful mediation efforts, Recorder Heap will reinstate the voting status of citizens at issue in this case" and that "it should not have taken litigation to make Justin Heap follow the law."
• Supervisor Steve Gallardo called it "unacceptable that it takes litigation to force Recorder Heap to do his job" and thanked Mayes for protecting voting rights.
• Supervisor Thomas Galvin joked that "Justin Heap folds more often than an origami crane."
Critics pointed out that the documentation was exactly what Heap had asked for all along. Once the records were presented to the court, he restored the voters. Mayes ended up meeting the demand for proof rather than forcing restoration without it.
The Civic Tension
The core dispute was simple. Arizona voters and the Legislature require documentary proof of citizenship for full participation in state and local elections. A state systems error let some long-registered voters onto the rolls without clear proof. The Supreme Court and the Attorney General's opinion limited how far a recorder could go in removing eligibility because of that error. Heap used SAVE, referred cases, and used a status that forced the proof question. Prosecutors cleared most of the people who had voted as citizens. Mayes and Fontes then asked a court to force restoration without Heap receiving the documents his office said the law required.
Supporters of the lawsuit saw it as protecting confirmed citizens from losing their vote because of an unreliable federal database and an overly aggressive recorder. Critics, including Heap and supporters of the SAVE Act and citizen-only voting, saw it as a backdoor: using the courts and the Attorney General's reading of Richer to restore full ballots without the proof the statute calls for. As one commenter put it, A.R.S. § 16-165(A)(10) "doesn't say the Recorder must activate the voters without DPOC based on a cult of trust," and a real investigation would include collecting the actual proof documents.
Others argued that the Maricopa County supervisors, Mayes, and Mitchell were effectively trying to end citizen-only voting by letting voters cast full ballots without documentary proof, as long as county attorneys and the AG declared them citizens.
Arizona's Elections Procedures Manual and Title 16 give county recorders specific duties and limited discretion. Here, the demand for the actual citizenship documents produced a resolution and a dismissal. The bigger question is whether future proof-of-citizenship disputes will be settled by producing the records Arizona law requires, or by court orders that treat that requirement as optional for long-registered voters.
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