Audio of a conference call earlier this month between Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, and Attorney General Kris Mayes obtained by the Washington Post reveals the the three agonizing over what to do after they had found out that circa 98,000 voters in the state had been registered to vote for decades, even though there was no record they had ever provided proof of citizenship as is required under state law – a situation that they were most certainly going to be damned on either way given how it was perfectly formulated to fuel MAGA conspiracy freaks.

The origin of the problem goes back to 2004, when the state passed the proof of citizenship law, leading to nine years of litigation ending with the Supreme Court ruling in 2013 that federal law prevented the state from enforcing it for presidential and congressional elections. The state then implemented a hybrid system where those who had not provided proof were given federal-only ballots that left off local and state races. What happened this month is that the Secretary of State’s office had found that the 98,000 had been erroneously been provided full ballots after 2004. Even better is that federal law prohibits states from making any changes to voter rolls under 90 days before election day, leaving Hobbes, Mayes, and Fontes with a perfect storm of shit.

“When this goes public, it is going to have all of the conspiracy theorists in the world coming back to re-litigate the past three elections, at least in Arizona,” Hobbs said. “And it’s going to validate all of their theories about illegal voting in our elections, even though we all know that’s not true.”

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In leaked conversation AZ Democrat “leaders” admit thousands of registered Arizona voters haven't provided proof of citizenship after shock computer 'glitch'

“Mayes worried about the outcome if they removed the voters from the ballot: 'The reality is that if…

— Kari Lake (@KariLake) September 29, 2024

The kicker is that even though MAGA conspiracy scumbags would obviously lose their shit if the roughly 148,000 voters – later revised down to 98,000 after further review – had not been purged from the rolls they would freak out if they were too, given the partisan makeup of the voter group.

“If we do what you’re talking about, we’re talking about disenfranchising probably tens of thousands of Republican voters,” Mayes said after Hobbs – who served as Secretary of State until winning the 2022 election against psychotic freak Kari Lake – advised her successor Fontes to “take those 148,000 voters and move them to fed-only and do everything I could to provide the resources for the counties to deal with that additional burden and to ensure the confidence in the system. I’m sure that there’s a very small percentage of those voters that are not actually eligible.”

Fontes sided with Mayes, saying “I have no intention of notifying 148,000 voters at this stage of the game that they have to scramble around when the state of Arizona has been providing them full ballots all this time,” reasoning that since there were far more Republicans than Democrats and independents in the group – 67,000 out of the original 148,000, per Mayes’s estimate – he could defend it politically. Rather than being accused of tilting the election to Dems, “we’re doing the opposite because that’s a pro-voter move, and it’s the right thing to do,” Fontes told Hobbs.

Later Hobbs said the partisan makeup “cannot be part of the conversation because then we’re politicizing it,” to which Fontes said trying to verify citizenship would be “an absolute shitshow at the counties if we tell them they need to go chase down 150,000” voters and get them to produce birth certificates or passports. “I loathe to shove this down their throats at this stage of the game.”

“Can you imagine telling 67,000 Republicans they can’t vote on the abortion initiative? I mean, Katie, I understand your point about not politicizing this, but the reality is that if we let this happen, all of these elections are challengeable. They’re going to be calling for a new election,” Mayes said.

“They’re going to be calling for new 2020 and 2022 elections as well,” Hobbs replied, saying they needed a court to put a stamp on their decision to send full ballots to the 98,000 voters.

Republicans are “going to beat us up” no matter what we do, Fontes told Hobbs. They did, with the help of “RINO” Maricopa County Recorder Steven Richer, and last week the state Supreme Court ended up ruling to allow the 98,000 “non-citizen” voters to cast a ballot with all races in November.

BREAKING:

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Arizona may have just illegally registered 100,000 illegal aliens to vote!

“Arizona “incorrectly marked these voters when they registered to vote as already having provided documented proof of U.S. citizenship, when really, it’s unclear whether they have,”… pic.twitter.com/oVFDWM1WRG

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) September 17, 2024

And this is the thanks Hobbs, Mayes, and Fontes got.