Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap ordered on Jan. 21 that over 242,000 inactive voters be removed from the Maricopa County registration list.
Arizona law dictates that inactive voters should be routinely removed from registration lists every few years. These rules aim to clean up the election process and to ensure voters who have changed their addresses are not still registered to the county. However, first time voters or voters who are new to Maricopa County have not always been made aware of this protocol.
The most recent voter removal has been the largest one yet, but it was not unfounded. According to the Maricopa County Recorder's Office, between 65,000 and 200,000 people had their voting registration canceled every year from 2021 to 2024.
"I would say that (Heap is) following the practice that was already in place," said Bill Gates, the director of ASU's Mechanics of Democracy Laboratory. "That's a good thing. I don't think that he went overboard in doing this. I think it's very consistent with what we've seen."
The Maricopa County Recorder's Office often sends mail to registered voters, but if the mail is undelivered or left unanswered, those voters will be marked as inactive. The Arizona Revised Statute 16-165(A)(7) then allows for inactive voters to be removed from the registry if they do not vote in the two general elections following the date that they were last mailed.
Gates explained that this rule is in place mainly to make sure that people who change addresses are not being unnecessarily included in Maricopa County's voting population.
Heap, who was elected to his position in November, also said the decision was part of an effort to make the electoral process more trustworthy.
"I promised to make cleaning the voter rolls a Day One priority in this office, and we're taking swift action to deliver on that promise," he said in a press release.
While Summer Dalton, a senior studying criminology and criminal justice, had known about this rule, she believes that most students probably do not.
"I think that a lot of people have a misconception of registering, and then, once they register, that they don't have to again," Dalton said.
Dalton suggested that people are not educating others on laws like this, whether that be through telling family and friends or through social media.
Seanika Mathis, a senior studying criminology and criminal justice, said she had not previously known that voters could lose their registration.
"I just think that everyone could always be a little bit more educated on voter awareness and voter education," said Mathis.
In her experience, people might be afraid to encourage students to do more than register, or not want to go out of their way to explain electoral processes and other legislation.
"There is a big push to get people registered to vote, but the conversation sometimes dies out when it gets to actually going out and voting," she said. "Sometimes people think that registering to vote is being civically engaged enough."
Katy-Ann Dunn, who graduated from ASU in the fall semester and now interns for an Arizona lobbyist, worked at the polls during the election in November.
Dunn said inactive voter removal "is a necessary process for making sure we have an accurate count of how many people are in our district," but that people were often confused or frustrated with updates to the voting system, not because the rules themselves were untrustworthy, but because people had simply not been made aware of them.
Grace Marie Theesfeld, a junior studying psychology at UA, was a poll worker in Pima County during the 2024 election. Though she has not heard of similar actions being taken in Pima County, she said that she could understand why Maricopa made this decision.
"Removing inactive voters is not inherently a bad thing to do, but I think that governmental processes need to be very particular about the way they go about it," she said.
Theesfeld said officially keeping track of people who do not vote in Maricopa County could be important for data and information about elections, but people who are out of town could miss the messages that the Recorder's Office sends out.
"People move, people change addresses," she said. "Some people don't have permanent addresses in certain places where they might be registered to vote, like student populations. I think finding ways to contact people, either through email or phone … would be most advantageous. Simply sending mail-outs clearly isn't working anymore."
Theesfeld also said education on voter registration and the electoral process could improve, potentially through public school.
"Making those resources readily available is very, very helpful, because navigating those systems can be very complex and difficult," Theesfeld said.
Dunn said she often used to see ads on Instagram that pushed her to confirm her voter registration status, but many students still may not have understood that it was actually necessary to do so. She offered similar solutions to raise awareness, such as campus workshops on how to fill out a ballot or how to better understand state legislation.
"But I also don't think it's just the college's responsibility," Dunn said. "It should be more a Maricopa thing, where they have classes for people to come in and get resources."
Gates said that although many people have been removed from the registration list and may not understand why, they could easily become an active voter again by re-registering to vote.
"Making efforts to make things more coherent and concise is never a wasted effort," Theesfeld said. "We have to watch out, because sometimes that comes with sneaking things behind people's back when it comes to including different processes or putting in different systems that are exclusionary to voter populations."
Edited by Abigail Beck, Sophia Ramirez, Sophia Braccio and Alexis Heichman.
Reach the reporter at pkfung@asu.edu and follow @FungPippa on X.
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Pippa is a sophomore studying journalism and mass communication with minors in political science and German. This is her third semester with The State Press. She has also worked at Blaze Radio and the Los Alamos National Lab.
