Grand Canyon Times

J. Christian Adams, president and general counsel of the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), said on a recent episode of the Grand Canyon Times podcast that the film they produced exposing Arizona voters registered at commercial addresses was an effort to ensure "the election officials would fix the problem."

"We were doing this so the election officials would fix the problem," Abrams told host Leyla Gulen. "It wasn't about attaching blame to people, it was about getting the situation cleaned up. And I'm quite sure that in many of these cases, the person wasn't some sophisticated lawyer type who scrutinized the voter registration form and just wrote down their address."

"But the point is you need to fix it now that we know there's a problem," he said. "You don't get to stay on the rolls at a commercial address once it's figured out to be improper."

Adams joined the Grand Canyon Times podcast to discuss the 2020 election results in Arizona determined by less than 10,500 votes, as well as the short film he helped produced using current voter roll information that shows registrants using commercial addresses as their address of residence, which is illegal under Arizona state law. 

Adams also discussed his predictions for voter integrity in the 2024 election and how it will compare to the previous presidential election. 

Adams previously worked in the Voting Section of the U.S. Department of Justice from 2005 to 2010. In 2020, President Donald Trump appointed him to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, where he continues to serve with a term through 2025. Adams has been involved in election law litigation across 33 states and the territory of Guam, representing multiple presidential campaigns. He holds a law degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law and is a member of the South Carolina and Virginia Bars.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) is a nonprofit law firm that focuses on election integrity issues in the United States. Founded in 2012, PILF has pursued litigation related to voter registration list maintenance, election administration, and enforcement of the National Voter Registration Act. The organization seeks to ensure compliance with federal laws related to voter roll accuracy and has filed cases in multiple states. PILF’s legal activities often involve the pursuit of records or data from state election agencies and challenging practices it alleges may impact election integrity.

The Grand Canyon Times Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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Full, unedited transcript of this episode:

Leyla Gulen: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Grand Canyon Times podcast. I'm your host, Laila Ghulan. In this episode, we welcome back our guest, J. Christian Adams. Christian is president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation.

Prior to joining the foundation, he served from 2005 to 2010 in the voting section at the U. S. Department of Justice. President Donald Trump appointed Adams to the presidential advisory commission on election integrity. The president also pointed Adams as a commissioner to the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights, where he also now serves through next year.

Christian, welcome back. 

J. Christian Adams: Thanks for having me. 

Leyla Gulen: Yeah, your organization made a fascinating and eye opening film about voter rolls in Arizona. And, you know, the last time we connected, we talked about voter confidence and integrity in this year's [00:01:00] elections and, you know, with Arizona, along with a handful of other states.

States deciding who becomes our next president. The film doesn't come a moment too soon. So can you first lay the groundwork and give us some history of the last election in 2020 the results from that election and why the state is coming under the microscope? 

J. Christian Adams: Yeah, well, look, part of the problem is results took so long to get in 2020.

Some states And this is very simple to understand why places like Pennsylvania and Michigan don't start counting the mail ballots until the polls close. States like Florida start counting them days in advance. And that's why we get results from Florida on election night. And in other places, we don't get results for for days and weeks.

heaven forbid weeks this year. So that I think explains a lot of the chaos of 2020 the uncertainty after the election. Uh, hopefully it doesn't happen again. But, you [00:02:00] know, what can you do? 

Leyla Gulen: Sure. Well, the state carried 11 electoral votes and it came down to 10, 000 457 votes in favor of Joe Biden. So clearly every single vote mattered.

Uh, before I ask you about your findings, uh, in your film, tell us a bit more about this film, what its title is and the goals it set out to accomplish. 

J. Christian Adams: Both in Nevada and Arizona, we knew that commercial addresses were being used for voter registration. Things like. In Nevada, we had Larry Flint's Hustler Club, casinos, kino parlors, liquor stores.

In Arizona, there's a lot of fast food restaurants. There's also the Arizona Cardinals facility. A player for the Cardinals is registered to vote at the Cardinals playing facility. Uh, I don't think the cardinal lives there. The film we did is we went to visit all of these addresses, all of these [00:03:00] commercial addresses.

And we go and we're like, Hello, is the voter here? We'd like to talk to, you know, this particular registered voter. And sure enough, the registered voter did not live there. And that's a problem. You aren't supposed to have an election system where people are registered to vote where they do not live. 

Leyla Gulen: Yeah, you know, when people think of a film about voter rolls, they probably think it's going to be really dry.

But there's an element of comedy to it, and it would be funny if the consequences weren't so serious. So when you set out to visit these different businesses, these commercial properties and addresses, I mean, some of which, it was just land. It wasn't even an actual brick and mortar location. 

J. Christian Adams: Good, good, good memory.

And, and yeah, you know, I'm, I so appreciate your, uh, comment about comedy because Some people don't [00:04:00] find it at all funny, the videos, but I do. I mean, I think it's funny in the sense, for example, Lauren Bowman sort of is the star of the show. She's the communications director here at PILF. And, and she goes to a Sonic drive in and asks for the guy who's registered to vote at the Sonic, and they're like, oh, he doesn't live here anymore.

And, and she goes, oh, we'll just take the milkshakes. I mean, it, it, it shouldn't be this ridiculous, right? It shouldn't be this ridiculous, but it is, and it says something about the state of the voter rolls. 

Leyla Gulen: It certainly does. How many perceived and or proven non residences did you visit to make this film?

J. Christian Adams: Oh, well, we started by looking, uh, a desk or an armchair exercise where you actually get all the thousands of commercial addresses. Uh, and then you run them to get tags on which ones are commercials, which is not an easy thing to do, but we did it. 

Leyla Gulen: Yeah, it sounds very time consuming. 

J. Christian Adams: It [00:05:00] is, but we have good people who are experienced doing it.

And you also have to filter out bad ideas. Like look, you never worry about a storage facility because storage facilities in Arizona and Nevada market themselves by having 24 hour people there and, and people do in fact live in storage facilities and, and they do that so the storage facility can market that they have people there all the time.

So you don't go to a storage facility because. The person will be there. You don't go to an old age home, a dorm. You know, these are mistakes that some people make when they do this work. And that's why you go to the liquor store and the strip club and the sonic drive ins because So to answer your question, it started with thousands and ended up being, you know, hundreds or thousands depending on which state.

And, uh, we just featured some of the more interesting ones in the film. 

Leyla Gulen: Yeah, you certainly did. So going back to that difference of less [00:06:00] than 10, 500 boats back in 2020 in Arizona, how many do you think exist? Is there any way to tell how many you think exist today? 

J. Christian Adams: I mean, don't forget the ones we went to in Nevada were in fact casting ballots.

Uh, the Nevada, the Nevada list were casting ballots. Um, so Uh, you know, the problem, the problem is unknowable. I mean, we know that a sizable number of these cast ballots and that's why we wanted to fix it. Is it within the 10, 000 vote margin? I don't know. I don't know that answer. 

Leyla Gulen: Yeah. And without getting too in the weeds with this, if I'm playing devil's advocate, could any of these registrants have not understood the rules and simply put their work address down as their residence?

Just by accident, because, you know, there were times that you included in the film that current employees verified that that person you were looking for were both either [00:07:00] former or current employees and or former owners of the business in question. 

J. Christian Adams: Absolutely. But don't forget, Layla, we weren't doing this investigation to get people in trouble for doing something wrong.

We were doing this so the election officials would fix the problem. It wasn't about attaching blame to people. It was about getting the situation cleaned up. And I'm quite sure that in many of these cases, the person wasn't some sophisticated Uh, you know lawyer type who scrutinized the voter registration form and just wrote down their addressing maybe the arizona cardinal guy got Drafted and the first place he lands in phoenix is at the cardinal's facility And that's the only address he knows but the point is you need to fix it now that we know there's a problem You don't get to stay on the rolls at a commercial address once it's figured out to be improper.

Leyla Gulen: Right. And will these voters have a chance to re register with a bona fide residence address? [00:08:00] 

J. Christian Adams: Yeah, let's hope. I know that in Nevada, we got a settlement in Clark County. Uh, where you hope there's a remedy like that where they're actually fixing the problem. 

Leyla Gulen: You know what? It dropped out there for just a second.

Let me, let me ask that question if you wouldn't mind repeating it. Uh, so will these voters have a chance to read register with a bona fide residence address? 

J. Christian Adams: Yeah, they should be able to like in Clark County when we got a settlement there. And fix the problem that these people are have every opportunity to register in the correct place.

Leyla Gulen: Okay. And it's stated in the film that since those voter rolls came under scrutiny following the 2020 election, Arizona lawmakers have done nothing to correct the issue. So based off of what you've uncovered, what has or is being done to correct the voter rolls once and for all? 

J. Christian Adams: Well, I'm afraid to report in Arizona.

I don't know the answer. Um, [00:09:00] we decided, uh, you know, that that exposing the problem would be our priority. Um, and I'm afraid that probably not enough has been done to fix it. 

Leyla Gulen: Yeah. Yeah. And how are we going to know that each ballot cast will be legitimate and counted properly? Is there? 

J. Christian Adams: Well, look, that's a huge task.

I mean, as far as these commercial dresses go, there's really not a grounds to say that person, if they vote in that precinct, aren't entitled to vote because they're still registering and folks who think you can just tear people off the voter rolls because you don't like the state of play on the on the registration.

I've got another thing coming. It doesn't work that way. There's a there's a very thorough process under various laws to before someone can be removed from the voter rolls. Um, and so, you know, the Arizona [00:10:00] issue is not going to solve in the next couple of days. 

Leyla Gulen: Right, of course, of course not. Now, are there either third party or interested parties ensconced at each polling place to ensure integrity in the process?

And I know that with more than 200 polling places in Maricopa County alone, is this even possible? 

J. Christian Adams: No, yeah, people who are in the polling place won't have any power or right to do anything about these particular registrations. They would, if they really persisted, they probably would end up getting arrested because they're trying to cancel people's votes.

Right. 

Leyla Gulen: Right. Okay. Now, of course, you know, we think about Carrie Lake's claims of fraud for her failed 2022 bid for Arizona governor. Do you think there was any legitimacy to her claims at that time? 

J. Christian Adams: Well, I, you know, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not familiar enough with the particulars, unfortunately, about Carrie Lake's.

I don't know. I'm sorry. 

Leyla Gulen: Okay. All right. Well, uh, just since I brought her up, she's ahead in her Senate race against democratic [00:11:00] opponent, Phoenix, Congressman Ruben Gallego, uh, to take over the seat held by Kristen cinema, who's a former Democrat turned independent and is not running for reelection. So, so basically, you know, bottom line of this film is that every vote counts.

Matters. So, I think there's claims that people were somewhat apathetic in the last round, maybe a little too comfortable with results as they were previously, say in 2016. Do you think, do you foresee, if you had a crystal ball and could prognosticate that you're going to see more voters hitting the polling places this time around or sending in there?

Early mail in ballots this time around, as opposed to former elections. 

J. Christian Adams: Yeah, for sure. I mean, look, the Republican party and Republican candidates. Have, um, [00:12:00] emphasize the importance of, of using every means available to cast a ballot. And I heard a line that said, if you wait till election day, you might need a snowplow, you know, in Wisconsin and Michigan, at least not an error, not unless you're in Flagstaff, maybe, but 

Leyla Gulen: right, right.

J. Christian Adams: You know, you're not gonna, you're not gonna, um, you, you lower the odds of you casting ballot. If you wait until election day, that's just how it goes. I mean, you might get a flat tire. And so the campaigns on both sides have said, Okay, please vote early. Please vote however you can. I know we told you in the past.

That's probably not a good idea. I personally would go. I already have. I can tell you what I did. I went to vote in person early. I don't think I would really want to be dropping my ballot in the mail. Considering how much I get a mail from my neighbors delivered to me. Um, but that's, that's probably the [00:13:00] best way to do it.

Leyla Gulen: Yeah. And how do you explain this? If I can just be anecdotal here for a moment, but you know, I've lived in South Carolina now for almost 10 years yet. I'm still receiving ballots from the state that I moved from. Which happens to be California. So why am I still receiving these? 

J. Christian Adams: That's incredible. Yeah. I wish you'd sign up to be a plaintiff of PILFs because we would gladly sue California to take you off the voter rolls.

Um, and it shouldn't be happening. That's outrageous. And frankly, they shouldn't be forwarding the ballot either. I mean, there's so many problems with what you just described. Um, it's, it's a hideous thought. You're probably being replicated also. That circumstance is being replicated all around the country with former, um, former, you know, Californians.

Leyla Gulen: Oh, goodness. Oh, that's interesting. So, so you think that this, [00:14:00] This particular issue is an issue in many other places in the country that other, that a lot of other people are, are maybe receiving these things, not reporting it, just throwing it in the trash, you know, cause that's what I do. I just rip it up, throw it away, you know, and then I ended up getting more stuff in the mail with every election that takes place in Los Angeles County in California.

I keep getting these 

J. Christian Adams: bits 

Leyla Gulen: of mail. 

J. Christian Adams: Yeah, no, it's, it's, it should be happening. 

Leyla Gulen: Okay. Very interesting. So, so where do you go from here? You know, I know that there's a lot of states that there are current, you know, especially with the Republican Party, they've been very proactive this time around instead of kind of scrambling together these lawsuits.

After the fact, they've been a bit more proactive, kind of getting things into the court system ahead of the election. So again, if if you could prognosticate [00:15:00] what to expect come November 5th, we're just days away. Uh, do you foresee? issues the way we experienced them and contested issues the way we experienced them back in 2020.

J. Christian Adams: No, you can't possibly replicate that. I'm just hopeful that there's no chance that that will happen. Um, so, you know, fingers crossed because we've learned too many lessons from 2020. You don't bring frivolous cases. You don't say that more people voted than than people alive in certain Michigan counties.

That was all bunk. It was all nonsense. And it hurt when you when you push bunk and nonsense, you hurt legitimate efforts to keep the election clean under the law because judges start to think everyone who appears in front of them are crazy people. So I don't think, I don't think there's going to [00:16:00] be wild bunk being filed in courts to the same degree that it was in 2020.

Leyla Gulen: Okay. All right. Now, John, for people who want more information, where do they go and how do they see this film? It's a, it's a great way to spend eight minutes of your day and you learn a lot. So I highly recommend it.

J. Christian Adams: Publicinterestlegal. org. Publicinterestlegal. org. 

Leyla Gulen: Fantastic. And the name of the film again? 

J. Christian Adams: Uh, it's, I think it's PILF Visits Arizona Commercial Addresses. I think it's, I think that's what it's called. 

Leyla Gulen: It's pretty straightforward. Merely 

J. Christian Adams: descriptive to borrow trademark terms. 

Leyla Gulen: Yes, indeed, indeed. Well, J.

Christian Adams, thank you so very much for joining us. It's been fascinating to speak with you again, and great job on the film. You did a wonderful, wonderful job on that. Um, hopefully you'll continue to make more of these. I think it's a great medium in which to help people better understand civics, [00:17:00] if anything else.

J. Christian Adams: Well, thanks a lot. 

Leyla Gulen: Wonderful. All right. I'm going to go ahead and stop recording. So just bear with me here for one moment.