Noncitizen Votes Traced to Driver’s Licenses

Eight noncitizens voted in Maricopa County elections because of a systemic flaw linking old driver’s licenses to voter registration, County Attorney Rachel Mitchell said Monday.

Prosecutors reviewed 207 people referred by the county recorder and focused on the 60 who voted, finding eight were not citizens.

All eight received driver’s licenses before 1996, when proof of citizenship wasn’t required. For seven of them, later license renewals made them appear eligible.

Mitchell called for a legislative fix. In 2024, a related state Motor Vehicle Department coding error drew wide scrutiny before that year’s election.

  Batting Title Among Season Highlights

The Arizona Diamondbacks and their fans came away with plenty of great memories from this past season despite the sting of just missing the playoffs, including a batting title and last week’s thrilling six-game win streak that kept the playoff chase close.

Diamondbacks catcher Gabriel Moreno became the team’s first player to win an NL batting title, hitting .311 to edge Philadelphia’s Luis Arraez by one point. Beyond batting average, Moreno finished fourth in the NL in on-base percentage (.388), 14th in slugging (.486) and fifth in OPS (.874).

“I feel good. It’s something that you dream about since you start playing baseball at 3 years old, 4 years old. It means a lot to me, my family, and I hope to my teammates and the organization,” Moreno said.

Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo, whose contract is expiring, said he wants to return but is unsure of his future after Arizona finished 86-76 and missed the playoffs for a third straight year. “I want to win a world championship with this organization, but I want to be wanted,” he said.

Cyclist Wins World Title

Brandon McNulty of Phoenix won the elite men’s road race at the UCI Road World Championships in Montréal on Sunday, becoming the first American to win the race since 1993.

McNulty, who rides for UAE Team Emirates XRG, held off the field with a solo attack over the final 32 kilometers of the 273-kilometer race.

“In the end, I knew something could happen, but it would take a miracle. I guess today miracles happen,” he said. The win came a decade after McNulty won the junior world time trial title in 2016.

Michael Matthews of Australia took silver and the Netherlands’ Mathieu van der Poel took bronze, with both finishing about 13 seconds back.

A Note from Cole, CEO of The Flyover

Dear Reader,

Buried in the official editorial guidelines of one of the world’s largest news organizations—on the books for decades, published for anyone to read—is a remarkable sentence. It says the word terrorist “can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding.”

The written policy is that the plainest true word for an act of terror gets in the way of understanding it.

That’s not one outlet’s quirk. It’s mainstream media doctrine. And last month, you got to see where doctrine like that leads. Ahead of the 25th anniversary of September 11, reporters at another major news organization, a national public broadcaster, received a memo from the standards office: “Do not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorist attacks.”

The approved language for the deadliest terrorist attack in American history, in which nearly 3,000 people were murdered, was “hijackings that led to plane crashes.”

The memo leaked. Two days of daylight later, the broadcaster backed down. Sort of. They carved out an exception for 9/11, and only 9/11. The rule stands.

And their defense was telling. They didn’t argue that the rule is right. They argued that it’s the industry standard and that newsrooms everywhere follow the same practice.

The worst part is, they’re right. It is the standard. That’s the problem.

You know why we exist. The truth isn’t a barrier to understanding. It’s the only road there. The facts arrive the way we found them, in plain words, and you decide what they mean. That’s your job, and we’d never dream of doing it for you.

We call things what they are.

We keep the spin out and trust you with the facts.

And The Flyover stays free.

A terrorist attack is a terrorist attack. We’d print that sentence any day of the week. No memo required.

So today I’m asking: if news that calls things what they are is something you want to see thrive, will you stand behind it?

Support the news in plain words. Free, every morning.

Make a generous donation to support The Arizona Flyover.

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Our promise: we answer to you.

Help us keep it.

— Cole
 CEO, The Flyover

Flying together with our sponsor

➤ Tortilla Flat: Business in the six-resident Apache Trail town has dropped by about half since draining began on nearby Canyon Lake for dam maintenance, a local saloon manager said. (More)

➤ Tempe: The city council will vote Oct. 15 on a proposal to make Tempe the first city in the state to ban automated license plate readers, a move opposed by Police Chief Ken McCoy. (More)

➤ Statewide: Attorneys for 25,000 state prison inmates asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reject Arizona’s bid to delay a court-appointed receiver’s Oct. 19 takeover of prison health care. (More)

➤ Mesa: City council members signaled support for higher fines and limits on repeated deadline extensions for blighted commercial properties, citing about 2,100 open code complaints. (More)

➤ Tucson: A study of Western snow-measurement tools ranked a University of Arizona program among the best, while saying the tools can vary widely in their measurements. (More)

➤ Phoenix: About 70 tribal leaders, state officials, and community members met at the state Capitol last week for the second Arizona Tribal Energy Summit & Workshop. (More)

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➤ The Phoenix Suns open training camp today, with center Mark Williams expected to miss about five months with a torn labrum. (More)

➤ Meanwhile, the Suns’ jerseys will carry a patch for Paze, the digital wallet from Scottsdale-based Early Warning Services, which replaced PayPal as the team’s jersey sponsor. (More)

➤ The Arizona Cardinals’ defense gave up 437 yards in Sunday’s 36-30 loss to San Francisco, spoiling rookie running back Jeremiyah Love’s 109 yards from scrimmage and extending Arizona’s divisional losing streak to eight. (More)

➤ Yesterday’s Results: NFL | Soccer

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➤ AF Steel Fabricators will open a $20 million, 55,000-square-foot second facility in the East Valley next month to handle work on projects including TSMC’s Phoenix campus and data centers. (More)

➤ Arizona defense contractors report increased business, as low-cost drones reshape the Iran conflict, while Raytheon landed a nearly $23 billion Tomahawk missile contract in August. (More)

➤ Glendale will use room tax dollars to fund its three-year deal with TKO Group Holdings for seven UFC, WWE, PBR, and Zuffa Boxing events. (More)

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➤ Seniors as old as 80 earned yellow belts in an adaptive shotokan karate program in Mesa, with one skipping ahead to earn an orange belt. (More)

➤ Well-testing data collected by a Northern Arizona University chemist is being used in an interactive map that shows which wells on the Navajo Nation contain safe drinking water. (More)

➤ An international study led by Banner Health in Arizona found a refined blood test measuring the p-tau217 protein can detect Alzheimer’s disease faster and more cheaply than PET brain scans. (More)

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The following stories are featured exclusively on The Flyover Podcast—a daily show that gives you the most important headlines in under 15 minutes. 

➤ Scientists ranked the seven pets linked to longer lives, and No. 1 isn’t a golden retriever. (Hear List)

➤ Every household in a Pennsylvania town was offered $10,000 by a data center developer, but residents are pushing back. (Hear Details)

➤ Experts say Spirit Halloween’s real estate strategy quietly signals something about the shopping centers it moves into. (Listen Now)

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