‘Apartheid in the US’: Arizona’s secretary of state fights Trump’s plot to amass a ‘master list’ of voters | Arizona

Arizona’s top election official warned that Donald Trump is trying to elect his own citizens and control who can vote by collecting the personal information of all Americans.

Adrian Fontes, Arizona Democrat Minister of Foreign AffairsHe fears that the Trump administration’s active efforts to forcefully extract voter files in 30 states, including Fontes’, are part of a larger plan to collect vital information on all U.S. citizens into a central database. “Trump is trying to create a master list that will allow him to declare someone an enemy of the state,” he said.

From his 19th-floor office in Phoenix, Fontes said Trump wanted to create the equivalent of “apartheid in the United States” and likened his actions to those of his counterpart in North Korea. With all Americans’ personal information at his disposal, the president can regulate important aspects of his opponents’ lives, including “closing their bank accounts or denying them health care.”

“This is Donald Trump trying to pick his own voters,” he said.

Fontes won a major victory in his ongoing battle with the Trump administration on Tuesday, when a federal judge threw out his lawsuit against Arizona over the U.S. justice department’s refusal to release voter rolls. Trump-appointed judge Susan Brnovich ruled that the Justice Department had no right to obtain the document under federal law.

The case was part of a Justice Department effort to obtain voter roll information from all 50 states and has sued 30 states, including Arizona, that refused to cooperate. At least 13 states have voluntarily complied with the Justice Department’s demands, but many are resisting.

In the cases where the courts decided to disagree (California, Oregon, Michigan, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island), all judges ruled against the administration. Fontes – who a lawsuit was filed against him After refusing to hand over the data, he joined the list of vindicated parties by stating that disclosing the sensitive personal information of nearly 5 million Arizona voters would be illegal under state law.

“This is now the sixth federal court to reach the same conclusion. Arizona acted correctly in denying this request, and today’s decision confirms that decision,” he said.

Fontes was named secretary of state four years ago as part of a Democratic sweep of top positions across the state. Katie Hobbs was elected governor and Kris Mayes was elected attorney general.

All three are currently seeking re-election Republican opponents People who embrace, to varying degrees, the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

For years, Arizona has played a pivotal role in Trump’s efforts to fuel election denial conspiracy theories. Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, is one of the largest and most electorally important swing counties in the country.

It was the focus of a bitter battle in 2020 in which Trump loyalists sought to claim victory over Trump’s defeat by Democratic rival Joe Biden. The Republican-controlled state Senate hired Cyber ​​Ninjas, a private security firm with no background in election administration, to conduct an audit of Maricopa County’s results.

The largely debunked audit concluded that Biden won the election.

Arizona is back in the spotlight as the November midterm elections approach. The state has been the subject of at least three federal investigations into its election procedures, while the Trump administration continues to cite baseless claims that election fraud is widespread.

The Justice Department claims the data requests are aimed at rooting out widespread fraud and voting by noncitizens. Fontes denies this claim.

“This has nothing to do with non-citizens because non-citizens don’t vote. Every study shows that,” he said. “So here we have an unprecedented attack on Americans’ privacy, being sold on the false narrative of illegal voting.”

In March, the FBI seized a trove of digital data compiled during the Cyber ​​Ninjas’ audit of Maricopa County in 2020. Although it is unclear exactly what is in the treasury, it is possible that it includes details of votes cast and images of actual ballot papers.

The material was turned over to FBI agents pursuant to a federal grand jury subpoena by Warren Petersen, the Republican leader of the state Senate. Fontes was scathing about Petersen’s decision to cooperate with the subpoena, suggesting it may have violated the state’s data protection laws.

“He was very quick to turn the material over to Donald Trump as a political favor,” Fontes said. “There was clearly no intention to protect Arizona voters or due process.”

Petersen’s compliance with the FBI’s subpoena will likely be a factor in the midterm election for Arizona attorney general. He is currently the frontrunner to become the Republican nominee to challenge incumbent Democrat Mayes.

The third federal investigation into the Arizona election is being conducted by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the investigative arm of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). At the same time get a refreshed look The 2020 presidential election has revealed yet another strange move to revive a contest that was decided more than five years ago.

“It’s like herpes,” Fontes said, referring to the constant resurfacing of the election denial conspiracy in Arizona. “It keeps coming back. And I don’t think the state or the nation deserves that.”

Trump’s latest tactic to take control of the elections from the states executive order Last month, he sought to limit mail-in voting by creating a national voter file in which the U.S. postal service would have to delay mail-in ballots before delivering them. The order, which is being challenged as unconstitutional, is particularly sensitive in Arizona, where 80 percent of votes are cast by mail in a system ironically designed by the Republican party decades ago.

“This is a bald attempt to completely control American democracy at the whims of a single political actor, and that is not only un-American, it is absolutely un-American,” Fontes said.

Fontes is preparing for a potentially bruising re-election fight in November, in which he will likely run against an election denier. The two Republicans vying for their party’s nomination in the secretary of state race both have a history of election rejections.

Attorney Alexander Kolodin was detained by the state bar after filing lawsuits challenging Biden’s 2020 victory. judge slammed Full of “gossip and insinuations.”

The other candidate, Gina Swoboda, a former chair of the Arizona Republican party, was the Trump campaign’s director of operations on election day 2020. Swoboda claimed more than 1 million ineligible voters could be on the list, in a lawsuit that was dismissed for lack of evidence.

Fontes said he is “cautiously optimistic” that he and his Democratic colleagues will sweep the state again in November. But he acknowledged “we need to be extra vigilant.”

“We must spend every day from now until November focused on communicating as clearly as possible with Arizona voters,” he said.

He said there are two factors at play that will make re-election even more difficult this midterm cycle: Unlike 2022, there is no U.S. Senate race in Arizona this year, so there is less appeal to draw Democratic voters to the polls.

The other factor he pointed out was the increasing influence of the right-wing activist group Turning Point USA since 2022. Turning Point, whose leader Charlie Kirk was killed by a gunman in September, is headquartered in Arizona and, according to Fontes, has largely replaced the former Republican party in the state.

“We have to be careful because we will be faced with conspiracy theories, lies and misrepresentations,” he said. “The stakes of this election are enormous, and every voter will be affected by the outcome.”