PHOENIX — Maricopa County election officials signed an agreement in August with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to access a federal database to check the citizenship of voters, according to emails between the Recorder’s Office and the agency.
Recorder Justin Heap’s office referred 207 registered voters to county prosecutors in March. At least 137, including 60 who had cast ballots in a past election, were flagged by the Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements system, or SAVE, when Heap's office used the database to check the citizenship of more than 61,000 people affected by a decadeslong Motor Vehicle Division error that incorrectly marked them as having provided proof of citizenship.
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It’s not clear if the additional 70 registered voters were also identified through SAVE. Heap’s office has not responded to multiple requests for comment or interviews.
ABC15 obtained four email exchanges between officials in the Recorder’s Office and U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services within DHS through a public records request.
Janine Petty, the county’s senior director of voter registration, told USCIS the Recorder’s Office wanted a standalone account authorized for both voter registration and “list maintenance.”
The county already had access to SAVE through the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office. That account was created in April 2005, the agency told Petty in an email.
“DHS prefers that counties go through one central point of contact in the state so they can get their information derived from there,” Secretary of State Adrian Fontes told ABC15.
Using SAVE for voter 'list maintenance'
A few months after the Recorder’s Office sent USCIS a signed agreement for SAVE, Heap’s chief of staff, Samuel Stone, told the agency to close the 2005 account because the agreement “has not been revised by the state and is only for voter registration purposes.”
“We requested and received the 2025 account and agreement specifically to cover both voter registration and list maintenance purposes as outlined by the requirements of SAVE,” he wrote in an Oct. 22 email.
Fontes said he didn’t know how Maricopa County would use SAVE for list maintenance.
“We do a careful job in our list maintenance,” Fontes said. “But I'd be interested to learn more about how Maricopa County is using it for that purpose.”
The United States does not have a central database of citizens. The Trump administration has revamped SAVE, an online system government agencies previously used to check eligibility for public benefits.
Election officials in states like Missouri and Texas have discovered widespread errors in SAVE’s results, with citizens incorrectly flagged as non-citizens, according to a ProPublica report in February.
“If you're using it to screen a massive list, you're going to have errors,” said Fontes, who told ABC15 he used it when he was Maricopa County recorder.
SAVE is a good tool, he said, but it’s also an incomplete database.
“I don't have anything against it, as long as it's being used appropriately, in a way that will not hurt or disqualify any actual citizens and voters,” he said.
The Trump administration has sued Arizona and 29 other states to force them to hand over statewide voter registration rolls, including personal information like addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and driver's license numbers. Fontes and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said disclosure of the data would be illegal under state law.
A federal court dismissed the Arizona case last month.
ICE to investigate voter cases
In March, Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell said her office’s Investigations Division would look into the 207 registered voters identified by Heap’s office.
In a news release about a Kansas voter fraud case, DHS said more than 60 million registered voters across the nation have been run through the SAVE database. Less than half a percentage point were flagged as potential non-citizens.
DHS said those cases were referred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators.
Fontes said the numbers illustrate how few cases of potential non-citizen voters are out there.
“The system is working well, is exactly what this describes to me,” he said.
