PHOENIX (AP) — The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Friday that nearly 98,000 people whose citizenship documents have not yet been confirmed will be allowed to vote in state and local elections.

The court’s decision comes after officials a database error detected who for twenty years wrongly stated that voters had access to the full ballot.

Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, and Stephen Richer, the Republican clerk of Maricopa County, disagreed over what status the voters should have. Richer asked the state Supreme Court to weigh in, saying Fontes ignored state law by advising county officials to let affected voters cast their entire ballots.

Fontes said not providing access to the full ballot to voters who believed they had met voting requirements would raise concerns about equal protection and due process.

The high court agreed with Fontes, saying county officials lack the authority to change voters’ status because those voters registered long ago and declared themselves citizens under penalty of law. The justices also said voters were not responsible for the database error and cited the short time remaining until the Nov. 5 general election.

“We are not prepared to disenfranchise voters en masse in state elections based on these facts,” Chief Justice Ann Scott Timmer said in the ruling.

Of the nearly 98,000 affected voters, most live in Maricopa County, where Phoenix is ​​located, and are longtime residents of the state, ranging in age from 45 to 60. About 37% of them are registered Republicans, about 27% are registered Democrats and the rest are independents or affiliated with minor parties.

Arizona is unique among states in requiring voters to prove their citizenship in order to participate in local and state races. Voters can prove their citizenship by presenting a driver’s license or tribal ID number, or they can attach a copy of a birth certificate, passport or naturalization papers.

Arizona considers driver’s licenses issued after October 1996 as valid proof of citizenship. However, a system coding error marked nearly 98,000 voters who obtained a driver’s license before 1996 — about 2.5 percent of all registered voters — as full voters, state officials said.

The error between the state’s voter registration database and the Motor Vehicle Division would not have affected the presidential race. But that vote count could be decisive in hotly contested races in the state Legislature, where Republicans hold slim majorities in both chambers.

It could also have implications for voting measures, including the constitutional right to abortion And the criminalization of non-citizens for entering Arizona through Mexico at a location other than a port of entry.

Although Richer and Fontes disagreed, they were both pleased with the court’s ruling.

“Thank God,” Richer said on the social platform X. He told The Associated Press on Thursday that maintaining voter status would become administratively easier.

Fontes, in a press release, called the ruling an “important victory for those whose fundamental right to vote was under scrutiny.” He added that election officials will contact voters who need to update their documentary proof of citizenship after the general election.

Voters who may have been affected were also satisfied.

After learning of the error earlier this week, John Groseclose waited an hour and a half at a Tempe motor vehicle office, only to discover that the clerk who helped him was unaware of the problem and did not know how to update his voter registration, despite presenting an official birth certificate and a new passport.

In response to the court ruling, he said he was relieved he would not have to search for a solution to the problem again next week.

“I am glad that none of us will lose our right to vote because of a mistake the MVD made some 20 years ago,” Groseclose told The Associated Press.