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Who is Adrian Fontes? What You Need to Know About Arizona’s Secretary of State

Vaseline September 21, 2024

Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is Arizona’s top elections official, a role that puts him in the spotlight in a crucial election year.

The most recent example was on Sept. 17, when Fontes was one of the election officials who took charge after a technical error was discovered in the interface between the Department of Motor Vehicles and the state’s voter registration system, putting the votes of some 98,000 Arizonans at risk in a lower-box election.

Fontes, a Democrat, advocates giving these voters access to a full ballot covering local, state and federal elections.

In his capacity as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Fontes is also responsible for certifying machines that count ballots, candidates and measures, and the results of national elections.

Here’s what you need to know about him.

Who is Adrian Fontes?

Fontes is originally from Arizona. He is a veteran of the United States Marine Corps, serving from 1992 to 1996. He was nominated for a meritorious commission.

After his military service, Fontes graduated from the University of Denver Law School. He practiced law for 15 years before declaring his candidacy in 2016. His legal career included stints as a prosecutor in the Denver District Attorney’s Office and the Maricopa County District Attorney’s Office, and he later headed the International Prosecution Unit in the Arizona District Attorney’s Office.

He is the father of three daughters.

What position did Fontes first apply for?

Before becoming secretary of state, Fontes served as Maricopa County clerk from 2017 to 2021. He defeated Helen Purcell, who served as state senator for 28 years, to become the first Democrat elected to the office in decades.

During his tenure as county recorder, Fontes abolished the use of assigned polling places, instead allowing polling places where voters from anywhere in the county could cast or drop off their ballots. He also worked to expand early voting options.

Fontes, who was seeking re-election in 2020, narrowly lost to Republican Stephen Richer. Richer, who lost his re-election bid in the GOP primary earlier this year, is currently working with Fontes to ask the court for guidance on the approximately 98,000 voters who are in limbo because of the MVD outage.

The issue involves people who got their driver’s licenses before 1996, the year the state Department of Transportation began requiring documented proof of citizenship for driver’s licenses.

When voters passed a law in 2004 requiring registrants to provide proof of citizenship, anyone with a pre-1996 driver’s license who was not already registered to vote would have had to provide proof of citizenship when they first registered.

But not everyone did. The Motor Vehicle Division accidentally coded its database to update the issuance date on those older licenses to the date the licenses were reissued. That meant that those who had older licenses but later ordered a duplicate slipped through the cracks and essentially avoided the citizenship requirement.

In a “friendly” lawsuit, Richer requested that affected voters be marked as restricted to voting in federal races for this election. That would allow them to participate in the presidential and congressional races, but exclude them from casting ballots in state and local elections.

Fontes, who was named as a defendant in the lawsuit, responded with his own motion to the Arizona Supreme Court, arguing that affected voters should still be eligible to cast their full ballots in November. He called the coding issue an “unintentional error” that should not “disenfranchise” voters.

Richer’s lawsuit argues that “immediate clarity” is needed to ensure consistency across the state’s counties. He and Fontes have called on the Arizona Supreme Court to make a quick decision, saying election officials across the state need to know whether to send affected overseas voters a full ballot or a reduced ballot. Election officials send those ballots out earlier than others to accommodate the speed of global mail.

What does Fontes do as Arizona’s Secretary of State?

Fontes was first elected in 2022.

He succeeded current Arizona Governor Kate Hobbs in the role after narrowly defeating Republican rival Mark Finchem. During their campaigns, Fontes and Finchem clashed over confidence in Arizona’s electoral system following the 2020 presidential election, with Finchem falsely claiming that Donald Trump had won.

As secretary of state, Fontes is Arizona’s top elections official.

In that capacity, he influences state election policy through his office’s Elections Procedures Manual, often called the “bible” of election administration. It builds on state and federal law and outlines procedures for everything from voter registration to early voting.

He is also first in line to serve as acting governor when the governor is away from the state, or to succeed the governor in the event of his death, resignation, or removal from office.

Throughout his tenure, Fontes has been outspoken about threats to election officials. He has also been a staunch defender of Arizona’s election system in the wake of unfounded conspiracy theories.

Contact the reporter via [email protected] or by phone at 480-259-8545. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @AlexandraHardle.