Grand Canyon Times

Arizona’s voter rolls had tens of thousands of duplicate and potentially unlawful registrations after the 2020 general election, according to the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF).

The legal group based in Indianapolis reports that 31,641 Arizona registrants had second registrations after leaving the state. Also, 863 Arizonians were registered twice under variations of their names, while 499 Arizonans claimed UPS stores as homes.

“Arizona election officials still have some time on their side to prepare voter rolls for the midterms. No maintenance scenario is off the table under law,” PILF President J. Christian Adams said in a statement. “Recent history has shown how seemingly silly errors in the voter roll can fuel election misinformation and heighten public stress amid a close outcome. PILF looks forward to doing its part in seeing that data findings are swiftly addressed before the 2022 elections.”

Arizona election law allows voters to claim group shelters as an acceptable address when registering to vote, the PILF brief notes. Indigents and transients can even claim courthouses and U.S. Postal Service buildings, but using the address for a commercial property, like a UPS store, is a violation of the law. 

The Foundation found 354 voters in the 2020 election claimed UPS stores as addresses in Maricopa County, particularly at locations in Tempe.

Also in 2020 general elections, Maricopa County, which includes the cities of Phoenix and Scottsdale, led the nation with 110,000 undeliverable mail ballots.

“During the 2020 presidential election, 15 million mail ballots went unaccounted for nationwide,” the brief states. “Another 1.1 million were returned as USPS-undeliverable.

“An undeliverable ballot typically means the voter data is out of date and available tools are not being leveraged to spot the problem in advance,” the brief continues. "'Unknown' ballots are defined as those transmitted without tracking which never returned for counting.”

A request for comment from the Arizona secretary of state, the chief election officer in the state, on the PILF findings was not immediately returned.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation has called out other states over voter rolls and has even filed lawsuits in some cases.

Last November, the Foundation filed a federal lawsuit against Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson for allegedly not removing remove deceased registrants from the voter rolls. There were 25,975 deceased residents on Michigan’s voter rolls as of August 2021. Joe Biden defeated Trump in Michigan by more than 150,000 votes.

Last spring the PILF settled a case with the Pennsylvania Department of State to remove deceased voters from the state’s voter rolls. The group's research found that the names of at least 21,000 deceased registrants were on the voter rolls leading up to the 2020 general election.

Biden carried Pennsylvania by about 80,000 votes over Trump.