By Staff Reporter |

Voters’ personal information was exposed after Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes’ office accidentally publicized them in violation of the law. 

For nearly two years, Fontes’ office avoided publicization of the mishap. Their communications remained limited to the victims of the accidental publicization. 

It was Votebeat who first found and reported on secretary of state records detailing the blunder this week. Fontes didn’t provide comment for the article. However, his chief of staff did go on the record.

Nearly 400 voters were impacted in the unintended disclosure in 2024. These voters were part of Arizona’s Address Confidentiality Program (ACP), which promises confidentiality for certain individuals with court orders of protection from the publicization of personal information like home addresses and phone numbers. 

ACP members are often victims of domestic violence, sexual offenses, or stalking. Some are members of the justice system, including police officers.

According to these email records uncovered by Votebeat, Fontes staffers failed to notice their accidental publicization of protected voters’ information for nearly nine months. It was only by chance at a meeting that one keen-eyed staffer realized the mistake.

Fontes’ office said the former director of voter registration, administration, and technology, Craig Stender, was to blame. Stender passed away in March. 

Stender denied wrongdoing immediately around the time of the office’s discovery of the error, which occurred in October 2024. Email correspondence from Stender indicated a breakdown in communication between the analyst who pulled the data and Stender. 

Fontes’ chief of staff, Keely Varvel, told the secretary of state’s human resources department in an email that Stender had incorrectly instructed an analyst on pulling voter records. Stender was fired in October 2024.

Varvel told Votebeat that the records, properly pulled, would have been redacted automatically. 

Staffers responded to impacted voters with information detailing what entities received their confidential records. This included a researcher at the University of Arizona and four out-of-state political data firms. One recipient passed along the protected voter records to another out-of-state political data firm.

While Fontes has publicly declared his commitment to protecting voter information, he never publicly announced this breach in trust concerning his office’s handling of confidential voter data. 

Much of that rhetoric has centered around Fontes’ fight with the Trump administration over voter records. A federal court ruled that the Trump administration didn’t have justification to require Fontes to turn over voter registration records. 

The Department of Justice sought Arizona’s entire voter registration list, which includes the full name, date of birth, home address, and driver’s license number or last four digits of a Social Security number. 

Fontes has also been very public in his criticisms of attempts to go after noncitizen voters.

Fontes has asked Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap to send him the information on the alleged hundreds of noncitizen voters discovered in Heap’s county. Heap opted to go to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office with the information, much to the chagrin of Fontes and Attorney General Kris Mayes. (Following two warning letters from Mayes, Heap did comply and submit the noncitizen voter list to Mayes’ office for investigation). 

Fontes cast doubt on the accuracy of Heap’s noncitizen voter list, arguing that the federal database used by election officials to confirm citizenship had a high error rate and couldn’t be trusted without further verification.

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