PHOENIX — A key election official in Arizona’s Maricopa County plans to ask the state’s highest court as early as Tuesday to prohibit nearly 100,000 longtime residents from voting in state and local races this fall after discovering the state has no record of asking them for documents proving their U.S. citizenship.

Like other states, Arizona requires voters to swear that they are citizens when they register to vote. But for 20 years, Arizona law has gone further and required residents to show birth certificates, naturalization papers or other documents proving citizenship to vote in state and local elections.

At issue is a pool of voters whom county and state officials have no record of having submitted those documents. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) said the vast majority probably are longtime citizens who are eligible to vote in all races. He said more are registered as Republicans than as Democrats.

No matter how the court rules on the lawsuit that a Republican county official plans to file, the voters can provide the necessary documentation before Election Day and receive a full ballot.

While the group is a small fragment of the 4.1 million registered to vote in Arizona — and the issue will not affect federal races like the presidential contest or Arizona’s hotly contested race for a U.S. Senate seat — they could be decisive in close statehouse races, elections for countywide seats or a ballot measure that will decide the extent of access to abortion.

The lawsuit could also inject a new element of chaos into the presidential election in a battleground state just a month and a half before Election Day because of how it could be rhetorically used by former president Donald Trump and his allies. The lawsuit will ask the Arizona Supreme Court to act with lightning speed. County elections officials planned to mail ballots to military and overseas voters on Thursday.

The litigation comes as Trump and other Republicans call for tighter rules to ensure noncitizens do not vote and as they spread false claims that those not eligible to participate cast large numbers of ballots. Voting by noncitizens is exceedingly rare, but critics have contended that more protections are needed to ensure it does not happen.

The disclosure could also play into false Republican narratives that Democrats want to remake the nation by “importing” voters through the southern border — a frequent claim in Arizona, where border security and illegal immigration are top issues for GOP candidates and voters. State and county officials who have dealt with harassment and misinformation since Trump narrowly lost the 2020 presidential election said they worry that the situation could bring more threats and further erode confidence in a system under attack.

“I have always told the truth, and we uncovered what is a design system flaw,” said Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer (R), who plans to file the lawsuit. “That means that this pool of people who we thought had documented proof of citizenship on file with the motor vehicle division does not necessarily have documented proof of citizenship on file. So, therefore, we did what we thought was the only morally responsible thing, and we disclosed that.”

Under Arizona law, those who don’t provide documents proving their citizenship are allowed to vote only in federal races, like those for president and Congress. While Arizona lawmakers originally wanted to require documentation to vote in any election, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that doing so for federal races violated the federal National Voter Registration Act. They receive ballots that show only those contests and none at the state level.

In his lawsuit, Richer plans to ask that the voters in question receive ballots that contain only federal races, including for president. Fontes, the secretary of state, wants the court to allow voters to receive full ballots that include federal and state races — just as they always have.

This month, officials discovered that for two decades, a pool of voters had been marked as eligible to receive full ballots even though they had never been asked to provide citizenship documents. About 98,000 of the state’s 4.1 million registered voters fell into that category, according to the secretary of state’s office.

The group consists of a narrow subset of voters who have lived in Arizona for decades. The voters received their initial driver’s licenses before 1996, got a replacement license sometime after that date and then moved or registered to vote for the first time.

When they received the replacement, the state’s computer systems indicated to local elections officials that they had provided citizenship documents even though they had not. The flaw has existed since 2004, when the state began requiring proof of citizenship for voting, officials said.

Even as the case is pending, voters can prove their citizenship to ensure they receive a full ballot. Fontes urged voters to act as soon as possible.

State and county election officials emphasized the need for a quick court decision: Under federal law, they need to send military and overseas ballots to voters this week. Early voting for other residents begins Oct. 9.

An employee in the recorder’s office discovered the problem this month during a routine check of voter rolls, officials said. The review flagged a man with a state driver’s license issued before 1996 who was registered in the system in 2022 as someone who had provided proof of citizenship. The man was ineligible to vote because he is a lawful permanent resident, not a citizen. Although registered, he had never voted, according to officials.

The county attorney’s office notified the secretary of state, setting off a review into why the state’s systems wrongly identified some voters as having proved their citizenship.

Fontes and other officials downplayed the possibility that a large portion of the 98,000 people are noncitizens.

“We don’t have any reason to believe that they’re not eligible citizens — in spite of the fact that we did find one,” Fontes said.

He added, “The biggest danger is doing nothing and getting accused of hiding an issue.”

Richer, an attorney, has been a target of those who spread false election conspiracies, Republican operatives and candidates. Since taking office in 2021, he has vouched for the legitimacy of the state’s election system and has frequently blasted out social media posts that fact-check people who amplify election misinformation. That approach didn’t always sit well with his critics, who helped defeat him during the state’s summer primary election.

Arizona voters approved the law requiring proof of citizenship as a ballot initiative in 2004, and it was originally meant to apply to all contests. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the measure violated the federal National Voter Registration Act for federal elections, and the state set up its dual-registration system after that.

Republican state legislators passed a law in 2022 aimed at requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship to vote in all elections, not just state ones. The law has been challenged in court, and last month the Supreme Court ruled that for now Arizonans can register to vote for federal elections without providing proof of citizenship. The case could eventually return to the Supreme Court.

Marley reported from Madison, Wis.

Vice President Kamala Harris is poised to sit for a rare interview with reporters from the National Association of Black Journalists on Tuesday, part of an effort to court Black voters and present a contrast with former president Donald Trump after his contentious sit-down with the group in July.

The conversation will be Harris’s first extended engagement with a panel of journalists since launching her campaign nearly two months ago, raising the stakes for the vice president’s campaign as early voting begins in several key states.

Harris will visit Philadelphia for the interview, returning to the critical city one week after her debate against Trump. Boosting Black turnout in swing-state cities such as Philadelphia is a key part of Harris’s strategy, and her campaign announced a mobilization effort Tuesday aimed at engaging young people and voters of color.

The combined efforts highlight how Harris is turning to Democrats’ most loyal constituency even as she downplays issues of race in her own rhetoric, said Ashley Etienne, a former communications director for Harris who also worked on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

“Her turnout among Black voters has to match, if not exceed, Obama,” Etienne said. “So she has got to supercharge Black engagement and turnout for sure.”

Harris has largely eschewed interviews with journalists since launching her presidential campaign July 21, instead preferring campaign rallies and other settings where she has stuck to scripted remarks. The approach had led Trump’s campaign to suggest that she was not capable of answering questions or speaking extemporaneously. Harris silenced some of those critiques with a solid performance at last week’s debate, though Trump’s allies still argue that unscripted events tend to expose her limitations.

During his own appearance at NABJ’s conference in Chicago two months ago, Trump caused an uproar by falsely claiming that Harris — the child of an Indian mother and Jamaican father — had exclusively embraced her Indian heritage.

“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black,” Trump said. “So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”

Harris, who attended a historically Black university, has long embraced her Black identity. Still, she has opted against making her race a central part of her presidential campaign, dismissing Trump’s comments as the “same old show” but otherwise largely ignoring them.

“Next question,” she said when asked about Trump’s remarks in a CNN interview last month.

Tuesday’s conversation could push Harris to speak more clearly about race, including any plans she has to address the racial wealth gap, address bias in the criminal justice system and bring down the cost of living for struggling families.

It could also surface some of the many issues on which Harris has shifted her position over the past five years. Harris previously entertained the idea of reparations for descendants of the enslaved, backed legalizing marijuana at the federal level and expressed an openness for reallocating some resources away from policing toward other services in certain situations. Her campaign has disavowed some of her past positions, but her current stance on several issues remains unclear.

The conversation with NABJ journalists will also be the first time Harris is speaking at length in public since a potential assassination attempt against Trump at his Florida golf club Sunday.

Trump has continued to assert, without evidence, that the “rhetoric” of Harris and other Democrats has put his life in danger. The White House and Harris’s campaign have condemned political violence and issued statements saying they are glad Trump was not harmed.

“Because of this Communist Left Rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!” Trump wrote Monday in a lengthy social media post.

Harris may also have an opportunity to speak about Trump’s attacks on immigrant communities, particularly Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), have spent recent weeks repeating baseless claims that Haitians in Springfield are stealing and eating pets in the town.

Officials in the town have said there is no basis for those claims. In recent days, schools and government buildings in Springfield have been targeted by threats of violence, in some cases requiring them to be temporarily closed.

Harris will be interviewed by Eugene Daniels of Politico, Tonya Mosley of NPR and Gerren Gaynor of TheGrio.

The event is being co-hosted by WHYY in Philadelphia, and the audience will include working journalists as well as students from local historically Black colleges and universities.

One of the odd aspects of the Secret Service’s encounter with alleged gunman Ryan Routh near a Trump Organization golf course was that Donald Trump was there in the first place. The presidential election is in seven weeks. Why is the Republican nominee hitting the links instead of the trail?

It’s not surprising, mind you. Trump’s calendar has been relatively light since he secured the Republican nomination earlier this year. During the 2016 campaign, he barnstormed the country, holding multiple events in single days, leveraging the enthusiasm of his base of support. This time around, he’s leaving a lot of that to his running mate while he hangs around his clubs and golf courses. Not weird for Trump that he was golfing on Sunday, but weird for a presidential candidate in mid-September of an election year.

Because an armed Routh was allegedly waiting near the course as Trump was playing, though, we learned a bit more about this particular outing than we normally do. We learned, for example, that Trump’s partner was New York real estate investor Steve Witkoff. And thanks to an interview that Trump granted Monday evening, we learned one likely reason Witkoff was with Trump: He is partnering with Trump on a cryptocurrency product.

Here, too, we have to note the layer of strangeness. It is, again, seven weeks until Election Day, seven weeks until voters weigh in on whether Trump should serve another term as president and — to put it in terms with which Trump is certainly familiar — seven weeks until voters decide whether to give Trump power over the Justice Department that might mean the destruction of federal criminal charges he faces. And, yet, Trump spent his time Monday evening speaking with Farokh Sarmad, a crypto influencer who offered Trump, his children and Witkoff a platform to discuss their new enterprise.

Sarmad first spoke to Trump, conducting the sort of sycophantic interview with which Trump is familiar. They didn’t actually talk about crypto much, except when Trump was touting his NFT collection. Trump praised Witkoff as “know[ing] a lot about this stuff,” then handing it off to his partner.

Donald Trump Jr., the Trump Organization’s executive vice president, also made an appearance, lamenting that banking had become “politicized” in the United States (“it’s sad and it’s disgusting,” he said) and arguing that “decentralized” finance through ownership of cryptocurrency was better. “The Democrat Party itself isn’t willing to give up the power and that control that they want over everyone’s balance sheet,” Trump Jr. said. This new product, he suggested, will address that.

The product, dubbed World Liberty Financial, was first promoted by Trump on Truth Social in August. A few weeks later, social media accounts for Trump’s daughter and daughter-in-law were hacked, with the accounts posting links to a crypto product that was not the one unveiled Monday. The cryptocurrency space, of course, is notoriously rife with fraud and cons, as Americans understand. (About three-quarters of Americans told YouGov this year that at least half of cryptocurrency companies are scams.) One common tactic is the “rug pull,” in which investments are solicited in a project with the creators simply taking the money. (Sarmad’s media company, it’s worth noting, is called Rug Radio.)

So here’s the question we ask, again in the context of the imminent election: Is Trump’s play here an effort to secure more support from the cryptocurrency community, a community that overlaps heavily with the young men Trump is trying to woo elsewhere? Or is it simply Trump focusing on business, hyping something that promises to be lucrative, whatever happens with the election?

It seems fair to assume that it’s not primarily the former. In fact, many in the cryptocurrency community have been critical of Trump’s plans and were critical of the interview. What’s more, it’s not clear what electoral benefit such a project would have. Is the idea to push eventual investors to cast ballots? To collect contact information that can be used by the campaign? Or is it just a sort of vague “I’m on your side” message — one that would be certainly redundant?

So we can instead assume it is primarily the latter. As Axios explains, the proposal is to establish a cryptocurrency-based lending platform, one similar to a project that was the target of a hack that resulted in the theft of most investor deposits. But such deposits could be made by anyone, introducing a new mechanism for, say, foreign governments to pass money to Trump and his partners.

You can see the appeal to Trump the businessman, if not Trump the candidate. Over the course of the 2024 cycle, Trump the businessman has often taken the lead, with the Republican nominee hawking Bibles and shoes and digital pictures and his own properties alongside his sit-downs with friendly media outlets. His political base has always been something of a consumer base, eagerly snatching up hats and Trump-branded gear. Out of the White House, Trump has embraced the dual utility of his supporters.

This crypto play, though, is different. It’s an entry into a notoriously sketchy space with little obvious political upside but an immediate economic one. And it comes as his opponent and his running mate are actively engaged in the tedious, exhausting process of actually running for office.

Trump consistently promises his supporters that he is relentlessly fighting for them. Shoehorning this effort into that frame (as Trump Jr. valiantly tried to do) is no small task. It looks a lot more like Trump once again doing a little something for himself.

Earlier this year, Americans’ perception of the presidential election was bleak. Both parties were seemingly about to nominate candidates who were broadly disliked — popular within their parties but broadly viewed negatively. The share of Americans indicating that they disliked both candidates was 25 percent, according to the Pew Research Center, the highest level on record. When voters were asked if they would like to see another candidate in the mix, most generally said they did.

And then, suddenly, the Democrats did exactly that. On July 21, after nearly a month of criticism over his performance in a debate against Donald Trump, President Joe Biden dropped out. Vice President Kamala Harris took over. And almost immediately Americans began expressing a lot more support for her as a candidate.

In 538’s average of polls, the percentage of Americans who view Harris favorably has for the first time exceeded the percentage who view her unfavorably. Only barely, mind you; the difference is one-tenth of a percentage point. And those expressing a favorable opinion are still less than half of respondents, thanks to people who aren’t willing to weigh in. But nonetheless this was not a situation that many people would have predicted two months ago.

You can see that the surge in approval of Harris occurred right after she took over as the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee. Before that point, Harris was viewed negatively on net — about as poorly as Biden. Trump was also viewed negatively, but thanks in part to more support from Republicans, he was less unpopular than the two Democrats.

Once Harris was the nominee, the picture shifted. Quickly. A week later, her net favorability rating was higher than Trump’s. It hasn’t been lower since.

If we look at data from one pollster, YouGov, we can see where those shifts were most prominent. Republicans and older adults didn’t move much. Pretty much everyone else did.

Since the last YouGov poll conducted while Biden was still the Democratic nominee, Harris’s overall net favorability rating has climbed nine points. Among Black Americans, it jumped 24 points. Among people under 30, it is up 19 points. Independents and those with a high school degree or less contributed an improvement of 16 points.

Those are increases in net favorability, so this doesn’t mean that favorable views climbed that much or, certainly, that she is now viewed more favorably than unfavorably with all of those groups. But she is now viewed favorably on net among those with college degrees and with women — two groups that will be instrumental in determining the outcome of the election.

This sudden change of fortune for Harris has been greeted with some confusion. After all, we’re used to a political environment in which views are fairly steady and polling doesn’t change dramatically over short periods. But it’s not as though there’s no precedent for noncandidates to be viewed with skepticism until they actually jump into the race.

The same thing happened in 2015, with a guy named Donald Trump. You probably know what happened next.

Former president Donald Trump’s legal team has requested a 30-day extension to respond to the government’s appeal of U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s dismissal of his classified-documents case, making it less likely that a ruling on whether the indictment should be restored will come before Inauguration Day.

The former president is very likely to be granted the extension. Special counsel Jack Smith did not oppose the request, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta — where the government’s appeal was filed — says first-time requests for 30-day extensions should be approved.

Trump’s lawyers said they can’t meet the court’s Sept. 25 deadline because they are juggling other due dates related to Trump’s separate federal election interference case in D.C. They asked to move the 11th Circuit deadline to Oct. 25.

“President Trump and his counsel are presently engaged in motion practice in a separate case brought by the special counsel in the District of Columbia, United States v. Trump, which will require counsel to spend time in a sensitive compartmented information facility (“SCIF”) in Washington, D.C. in the coming weeks to meet that court’s briefing schedule,” the Tuesday filing from Trump’s lawyers reads.

The appeal is in response to Cannon’s ruling in July that Smith was unlawfully appointed as special counsel — a stunning decision that tossed out the entire 40-count indictment against Trump.

Smith appealed that decision to the 11th Circuit, arguing that Attorney General Merrick Garland had clear authority to appoint him and that Cannon’s ruling ignores decades of legal precedent and appointments.

Once Trump replies to the appeal, the court will schedule oral arguments before a three-judge panel on the question of the legality of Smith’s appointment. The panel’s decision would soon follow.

It can take six months or more between the time an appeal is filed in a court and decision is made. So if a decision is to come before Inauguration Day on Jan. 20, the court would need to move faster than normal.

If Trump wins the presidential election, he would probably push his Justice Department to drop the appeal. That would leave the question of the constitutionality of Smith’s appointment unsettled in the 11th Circuit if oral arguments have not taken place.

If Trump loses the election, the appeals process would probably continue. Either side would probably challenge whatever the 11th Circuit decides, and the question ultimately could be settled by the Supreme Court.

Cannon’s ruling that Smith was unlawfully appointed dismissed, at least temporarily, what was considered by many lawyers to be the strongest criminal case against the former president as he again seeks the White House.

The 11th Circuit has already reversed Cannon at a much earlier stage of the classified-documents investigation. After FBI agents retrieved scores of classified documents from Trump’s home, Cannon ruled against the Justice Department and imposed an outside legal expert to review some of the evidence. That move was roundly rejected by the 11th Circuit, as was a decision by Cannon related to what documents could be accessed by federal investigators during the outside review process.

Smith is asking judges from that same court to again intercede to put the case back on track.

Federal authorities are investigating several suspicious pieces of mail sent to election officials in at least eight states, some of which contained questionable substances and led to building evacuations.

Elections offices in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Tennessee, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Missouri and Mississippi have confirmed receiving suspicious mail. The FBI and the U.S. Postal Service said in a joint statement Tuesday that they are investigating what they referred to as “a series of suspicious mailings sent to election officials in several states.”

“Some of the letters contained an unknown substance and we are working closely with our law enforcement partners to respond to each incident and safely collect the letters,” the statement said. “We are also working with our partners to determine how many letters were sent, the individual or individuals responsible for the letters, and the motive behind the letters.”

No state, so far, has reported that anyone has been harmed as a result of the suspicious mail.

The series of incidents is the latest disruption to election officials’ operations during an already contentious election season. Election Day is a little less than two months away, but early voting has begun in some states.

In November, suspicious letters mailed to election offices in at least five states forced evacuations and in some cases temporarily disrupted ballot counting after elections. At least one letter contained fentanyl.

On Tuesday morning, law enforcement was called to the Missouri Secretary of State’s Office to examine a suspicious envelope. JoDonn Chaney, a spokesperson for Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft (R), said the suspicious mail was identified in the office mailroom, and staff immediately contacted the Missouri Department of Public Safety. Chaney said Tuesday afternoon that the National Guard was removing the envelope.

The Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office also confirmed Tuesday that its elections division received a suspicious package the previous day.

“Thanks to information provided by federal agencies and partners, our office had been notified of the potential package and was on high alert,” the statement said. “Upon receipt, our staff handled the package in accordance with guidelines distributed by federal agents, and the package was promptly picked up by the Mississippi Department of Homeland Security where it is currently being tested.”

Several other states confirmed receiving similar suspicious mail earlier this week.

In Wyoming, the secretary of state’s office immediately contacted law enforcement and the office was evacuated after a white substance arrived in the mail.

“We take this very seriously,” Secretary of State Chuck Gray (R) said in a statement. “We will continue to work with law enforcement in monitoring this situation.”

An envelope identified Monday morning as suspicious by the Nebraska Secretary of State Elections Division “was isolated in a separate area in our office in accordance with established protocol,” according to a news release from Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen (R). A substance in the envelope was identified, and it was later tested and found to be nonhazardous.

“The situation was quickly and safely resolved thanks to the swift action taken by our staff members, law enforcement and other first responders,” Evnen said.

A government building in Topeka, Kan., was evacuated Monday due to suspicious mail, the Kansas Secretary of State’s Office confirmed.

Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate (R) confirmed that his office received a suspicious package Monday and immediately reported the incident.

“First responders reported to our office immediately and determined there was no threat to our staff or the public. We have now reopened our office and will continue to conduct normal business operations,” he said in a statement.

Tennessee’s Division of Elections “received a suspicious envelope containing a powder” Monday, according to Doug Kufner, communications director for Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett (R). He added, “It was later determined that no threat to the staff or public existed, and the substance tested negative for hazardous materials.”

The Oklahoma State Election Board also received a suspicious envelope in the mail Monday which contained “a multi-page document and a white, powder substance,” Misha Mohr, a public information officer for the board, said in a statement. The substance was later identified as flour.