In Maricopa County, Arizona, the SAVE system flagged 60 people as non-citizens, but county prosecutors found that only eight of those individuals were actually non-citizens.
Posted by The NPR Politics Podcast, Checked
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The NPR Politics PodcastSep 29, 2026
Multiple independent reports say the Maricopa County Recorder used the federal SAVE database, which flagged 60 registered voters who had cast ballots, and that County Attorney Rachel Mitchell's investigation found only eight were noncitizens (52 were citizens).
The guest relays this claim without endorsing it. It counts as passed on, not against the post.
What was said
… definitely some issues with SAVE that haven't been worked through, so it, it, um, it can't verify everyone who's a citizen and flags some citizens as potential non-citizens. Just yesterday, there were new results that came out of Maricopa County in Arizona. The recorder there used SAVE on the Maricopa County voter list, and SAVE flagged 60 people as non-citizens who'd previously voted in previous elections. But when county prosecutors dug into the data, they found that only eight of the 60 actually were non-citizens. The others were citizens, and the eight most had been registered to vote in error when they got their driver's license. I mean, that's been a common story. …
The NPR Politics Podcast · · from the transcriptPost →What we found
Supports. The County Attorney's investigation found only eight of the 60 flagged voters were noncitizens, and the other 52 were citizens.[1][2][3][4]
Supports. The 60 were voters who had cast ballots in past elections, and they were among 207 people the recorder flagged using SAVE and the MVD database.[4][5][6]
Supports. Reporting attributes the errors to a driver's license/MVD registration glitch that wrongly treated citizens as having proven citizenship, not to a coordinated effort to get noncitizens to vote.[2][3]
Context. Later reporting says the Recorder's office kept 25 of the cleared voters in 'not eligible' status, which led to a lawsuit that was later dropped; this does not affect the eight-of-60 finding.[7][8]
Sources
8 sources: 1 fact-checker, 7 not rated
- 1The Latest: Trump administration lowers fuel economy standardsapnews.com · fact-checker · cited for: supports
- 252 out of 60 voters flagged as noncitizens in Maricopa County ...votebeat.org · not rated · cited for: supports
- 3Maricopa County investigation in non-citizen voting finds 8 ...abc15.com · not rated · cited for: supports
- 4Maricopa County recorder grilled over botched noncitizen ...azfamily.com · not rated · cited for: supports
- 5Attorney general accuses Heap of blocking 25 citizens from votingrmb.reuters.com · not rated · cited for: supports
- 6Lawsuit: Maricopa County hasn't reinstated 25 voters mistakenly flagged in citizenship checktucsonsentinel.com · not rated · cited for: supports
- 7After lawsuit, Maricopa County reinstates 25 voters flagged ...phoenixnewtimes.com · not rated · cited for: context
- 8Maricopa County recorder restores 25 voters wrongly flagged as noncitizens, ending lawsuitazmirror.com · not rated · cited for: context
Where this claim was made
Said in 1 published post
Related claims
- Nevada state officials determined that the 185 individuals flagged by the Department of Homeland Security as non-citizens were actually U.S. citizens.True
- A ProPublica report from February 2026 stated that the Department of Homeland Security had to correct information provided to at least five states after the SAVE database misidentified some voters as non-citizens.True
- 185 manually confirmed cases of alleged non-citizen voting in Nevada were determined to be US citizens.True
- Of 64 cases brought by the Justice Department related to non-citizen voting, 56 individuals are lawful permanent residents.Can’t tell
- Approximately 27 states have used the SAVE program to verify immigration status for election purposes.True