Governor Katie Hobbs Announces Independent, Bipartisan Recorders Overseeing Audit of MVD Procedures

Phoenix - Today, Governor Katie Hobbs announced that Coconino County Recorder Patty Hansen and Former Yuma County Recorder Robyn Stallworth-Pouquette will lead the independent, bipartisan audit of MVD policies and procedures that was announced on September 17.

The bipartisan election officials will oversee a thorough examination of policies and procedures impacting MVD data relied on for voter registration to ensure election officials have what they need from MVD to meet Arizona's voter registration requirements. The independent audit will begin immediately, and produce a report with findings and suggested improvements by January 31, 2025.

"As soon as I became aware of the long-standing data incompatibility issue, I directed MVD to work swiftly in coordination with election officials to correct the issue," said Governor Katie Hobbs. "And now, out of an abundance of caution, it's important that we have a thorough audit of all MVD policies and procedures related to voter registration to ensure MVD is doing everything they can to support our election officials. I'm thankful to Recorders Hansen and Stallworth-Pouquette for bringing bipartisan leadership to this independent audit and I look forward to reviewing their findings."

"I applaud Governor Hobbs for proactively working to bring bipartisan and independent oversight to ensure MVD data can be accurately used for voter registration purposes," said Coconino County Recorder Patty Hansen. "This audit of MVD procedures and requirements will help election officials improve the voter registration system going forward and I'm honored to work with Robyn to provide our elections expertise and oversight."

"Ensuring election officials have the information needed from the MVD to successfully carry out voter registration is vital to the integrity of our election system," said former Yuma County Recorder Robyn Stallworth-Poquette. "I look forward to working with Recorder Hansen on this bipartisan, independent effort to improve and strengthen procedures and to provide Arizonans confidence in the process."

"ADOT's Motor Vehicle Division has a long history of working collaboratively with elections officials," said ADOT Motor Vehicle Division Director Eric Jorgensen. "We look forward to working with this bipartisan review, sharing information on MVD processes and the suitability of our data for voter registration purposes. We will continue making improvements to assist elections officials in the voter registration process in Arizona."

BACKGROUND ON THE DATA INCOMPATIBILITY:

Beginning December 8, 2004, Arizona law requires registrants to provide documentary proof of citizenship (DPOC) to register as "full-ballot voters," eligible to vote in federal, state, and local races. Those who do not provide DPOC may only be registered as "federal-only voters," eligible to vote in only federal races. The law also specifies a driver's license issued after 10/1/1996 can be valid DPOC. When a county enters a voter's registration application into the statewide voter registration database (AVID), AVID is programmed to query and pull driver's license records from the MVD database as DPOC for voter registration processing. The query returns data on, among other things, the license issuance date and alerts the county when the license is issued on or before 10/1/1996.

If an applicant was issued a license on or before 10/1/1996 but got a license duplicate, renewal or replacement after 10/1/1996, the operative issuance date in that person's MVD record is updated to the date the new license was issued. The AVID system was programmed to query the duplicate issuance date and would not alert the county that the license was originally issued before 10/1/1996.

As soon as the data incompatibility was brought to Governor Hobbs' attention on September 7, she ordered MVD to work with the Secretary of State's office to address the AVID interface's programming issue. The resolution has since been developed and deployed by MVD in coordination with the Secretary of State's office.

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