Arizona’s Maricopa County reportedly accepted over 4,000 ballots in the 2020 presidential election without requiring proof of citizenship, according to newly-released data.
The potential bombshell was discovered in documents that were requested by local Republican Committee precinct committeeman Tristan Manos and then obtained by Just the News.
According to the outlet, the documents show that 4,484 federal-only ballots were “accepted and counted in its canvass” in Maricopa’s November 2020 federal election, but were done so without requiring proof of U.S. citizenship.
These ballots represent over half of the 8,114 federal-only ballots that were cast that day.
That total included 3,630 ballots that were reportedly cast by overseas voters under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, according to Just the News.
The outlet noted that, while Arizona law requires all voters to provide proof of citizenship, the state allows residents who fail to do so to still receive a ballot for federal elections.
Federal voter registration forms require only a sworn declaration of citizenship, as noted on the Arizona Secretary of state’s website.
“A person is not required to submit proof of citizenship with the voter registration form, but failure to do so means the person will only be eligible to vote in federal elections (known as being a ‘federal only’ voter),” the website states.
“A ‘federal only’ voter will become eligible to vote a ‘full ballot’ in all federal, state, county and local elections if he or she later provides valid proof of citizenship to the appropriate County Recorder’s office.”
According to Just the News, a total of 14,298 Maricopa County residents were registered as “federal-only” voters for the November 2020 election.
The revelations made by the outlet are of particular concern due to Maricopa County’s history of problematic elections.
Maricopa County faced heavy scrutiny when it became the only county in Arizona to flip from red to blue in the 2020 presidential election. This led former President Donald Trump to allege voter fraud, with a relatively fruitless election audit ensuing.
In the 2022 election, Maricopa County experienced widespread ballot tabulation machine malfunctions that caused tabulators to reject ballots at 59 percent of polling centers.
Kari Lake, who lost her campaign for governor in that election, has argued that the county’s process of verifying voters was systemically flawed, leading her to contest the election results.
Her attorney, Kurt Olsen, said in court last week that when county officials were supposed to review ballot signature matches, the process was done at such a fast rate that it couldn’t have been done accurately.
According to Olsen, “over 264,000 ballots were reviewed at a rate less than 3 seconds [and] 70,000 at a rate of less than 2 seconds.”
“In addition, testimony that Level 2 reviewers were so overwhelmed that they simply didn’t look at the signatures that were piling up on their desk. They simply kicked them back for the Level 1 reviewers to take another look at,” he said.
via magatribute
