The Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer is asking that all these voters to only be able to vote in federal elections, while the Arizona Secretary of State is asking for those voters to also be able to vote in state and local elections as they had in previous elections.

The lawsuit comes after the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office discovered a decades old issue in the Motor Vehicle Division’s system last week that registers voters. The system wrongly assumed voters who received replacement driver’s licenses had proof of citizenship on file even if they did not.

A 2004 law required registered voters to provide documented proof of citizenship (DPOC), such as a birth certificate, to vote in local and state elections. The law included driver’s licenses issued after Oct. 1, 1996 as DPOC.

If someone requested a duplicate of a license from before Oct. 1, 1996, the license issue date would show up in the system as the date the duplicate was printed. However, it should have used the date the original was issued, according to the governor's office.

The system documented reprinted licenses as a DPOC when they were not.

These 97,000 voters had reprinted their driver’s license as their DPOC, meaning they actually had no DPOC in the voter registration system. In turn, they do not currently meet the requirements to vote, according to court filings.

“We are being open and transparent and bringing this to the public.” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said in a press conference Tuesday. “Arizona voters… deserve the best, most transparent, free and accessible elections that you can have.”

The voters are largely in between the ages of 40 and 65 and come from all counties in Arizona. The plurality of voters were republicans followed by independents and democrats, according to Fontes.

The outcome of this case will determine this block of voters' ability to vote in local and state elections. Arizona elections are notorious for their close margins and these voters could decide the difference in these elections.

The error comes after Arizona elections have been in the spotlight during the last couple elections for false claims of widespread voter fraud. Fontes said this error has already sparked new ‘conspiracy theories’ about this election.

The Maricopa County Recorder and Secretary Fontes have both called this a “friendly lawsuit”.

“We are trying to get clarity as well," Richer said in an interview with KTAR this morning before Fontes’s press conference. “He and I have a different legal perspective on what needs to happen here. The courts will give us that clarity.”

The lawsuit has already been called a form of voter suppression online. Some have also criticized the state saying the state allowed non citizens to vote using this glitch, though Fontes said there is now evidence to support this claim.

“This is a 20-year-old problem,” Secretary Fontes said. “This is the result of bad policy and underfunding of government systems.”

Fontes went on saying the error is an effect of saying lawmakers are letting conspiracy theories dictate policy.

The problem has been corrected in the Motor Vehicle Division system, according to Fontes.

“I directed MVD to work with the SOS to aggressively develop and implement a solution and, out of an abundance of caution, will be implementing an independent audit to ensure that MVD systems are functioning as necessary to support voter registration,” Governor Katie Hobbs said.

Fontes plans to file his response to Richer’s case with the court on Wednesday in effort to get the case resolved as soon as possible.

The outcome is now in the hands of the Arizona Supreme Court; however, Secretary Fontes said they are already preparing for if these voters are deemed to only be able to vote in federal elections.

Fontes said those voters will be contacted by elections officials after the lawsuit is finalized.

“Once we have a rule from the Supreme court, we will present an organized way to voter by which we  can gather [proof of citizenship],” Secretary Fontes said. “We are working to set up an electronic portal where folks can send us those documents… in case we need to do that”