AP: Arizona county election officials find fewer than 200 potential voter fraud cases, undercutting Trump claims
Fact check: No evidence election audit in Maricopa County has found widespread election fraud
Related:2020 ballots in Arizona’s largest county have been under scrutiny. Here’s what to know
Arizona’s potential cases also illustrate another reality: Voter fraud is often bipartisan. Of the four Arizona cases that have resulted in criminal charges, two involved Democratic voters and two involved Republicans.
Beyond bamboo and watermarks: The unconventional ways Arizona election auditors are searching for fraud
Virtually all the cases identified by county election officials are in Pima County, home to Tucson, and involved voters who attempted to cast two ballots.
The Pima County Recorder’s Office has a practice of referring all cases with even a hint of potential fraud to prosecutors for review, something the state’s 14 other county recorders do not do. Pima County officials forwarded 151 cases to prosecutors. They did not refer 25 others from voters over age 70 because there was a greater chance those errors — typically attempts to vote twice — were the result of memory lapses or confusion, not criminal intent, an election official said.
None of the 176 duplicate ballots was counted twice. A spokesman for the Pima County Attorney’s Office, Joe Watson, said Wednesday that the 151 cases it received were still being reviewed and that no charges had been filed.
Pima County’s tally was in line with previous elections, but there were some new patterns this year, said deputy recorder Pamela Franklin. An unusually high number of people appeared to have intentionally voted twice, often by voting early in person and then again by mail. In Arizona, where nearly 80% of voters cast ballots by mail, it’s not unusual for someone to forget they returned their mail-in ballot and then later ask for a replacement or try to vote in person, she said. But this pattern was new.
Franklin noted several factors at play, including worries about U.S. Postal Service delays. In addition, Trump at one point encouraged voters who cast their ballots early by mail to show up at their polling places on Election Day and vote again if poll workers couldn’t confirm their mail ballots had been received.
The results in Arizona are similar to early findings in other battleground states. Local election officials in Wisconsin identified just 27 potential cases of voter fraud out of 3.3 million ballots cast last November, according to records obtained by the AP under the state’s open records law. Potential voter fraud cases in other states where Trump and his allies mounted challenges have so far amounted to just a tiny fraction of Trump’s losing margin in those states.
The Associated Press conducted the review following months of Trump and his allies claiming without proof that he had won the 2020 election. His claims of widespread fraud have been rejected by election officials, judges, a group of election security officials and even Trump’s own attorney general at the time. Even so, supporters continue to repeat them and they have been cited by state lawmakers as justification for tighter voting rules across the country.
Maricopa County election review
In Arizona, Republican state lawmakers have used the unsubstantiated claims to justify the unprecedented outside Senate review of the election in Maricopa County and to pass legislation that could make it harder for infrequent voters to receive mail ballots automatically.
Senate President Karen Fann has repeatedly said her goal is not to overturn the election results. Instead, she has said she wants to find out if there were any problems and show voters who believe Trump’s claims whether they should trust the results.
“Everybody keeps saying, ‘Oh, there’s no evidence’ and it’s like, ‘Yeah well, let’s do the audit.’ And if there’s nothing there, then we say, ‘Look, there was nothing there,’” Fann told the AP in early May. “If we find something, and it’s a big if, but if we find something, then we can say, ‘OK, we do have evidence and now how do we fix this?’” Fann did not return calls this week to discuss the AP findings.
Aside from double voting, the cases flagged by officials mostly involved a ballot cast after someone had died, including three voters in Yavapai County who face felony charges for casting ballots for spouses who died before the election.
In Yuma County, one case of a voter attempting to cast two ballots was sent to the county attorney for review. Chief Civil Deputy William Kerekus told the AP that there was no intent at voter fraud and the case was closed without charges.
Cochise County Recorder David Stevens found mail-in ballots were received from two voters who died before mail ballots were sent in early October. Sheriff’s deputies investigating the cases found their homes were vacant and closed the cases. The votes were not counted.
Cassidy reported from Atlanta.