Staff of a well-regarded election integrity group took matters into their own hands and conducted an investigation since Arizona election officials failed to investigate the fact that obviously commercial addresses were on Arizona’s voter rolls.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) conducted its own investigation to see if the registrants who listed commercial properties on their voter registration actually lived at the address.
PILF’s Director of Communications, Lauren Bowman Bis, traveled across Arizona inspecting hundreds of commercial addresses listed as voters’ residences on the voter roll. Highlights of some of these commercial addresses included an abortion clinic, gas stations, liquor stores, vacant lots, schools, a smoke shop, a bank, fast-food chains, a strip club, golf courses, roller rinks, and bars.
PILF, the nation’s only public interest law firm dedicated wholly to election integrity, says this matters because, under Arizona law, people are required to register to vote where they “reside.” The voter registration form specifically prohibits listing a business address or a P.O. box as your residential address.
“We have been warning Arizona election officials about people registered to vote from commercial addresses since before the 2020 election,” said PILF President, J. Christian Adams. I hope this film will embarrass election officials into investigating the hundreds of commercial addresses on the voter roll. Arizona always comes down to a handful of votes which is why it’s so important this problem is fixed and why Arizonians need to go out and vote early this year.”
According to PILF, commercial addresses are not the only problems in Arizona’s elections. The state has a history of controversies including:
Just this year, it was revealed that a so-called “glitch” incorrectly marked 98,000 registrants as having provided documentary proof of citizenship.
- Arizona state law requires documentary proof of citizenship to vote in state and local races.
- The state Supreme Court ruled these 98,000 registrants can still vote in the upcoming state and local elections.
In 2022, Maricopa County was the center of an election controversy as ballots that were too long and paper that was too heavy created major tabulation problems on Election Day.
- This ballot-printing problem caused tabulators to reject some ballots and led to long lines.
- These printer malfunctions occurred at 70 of Maricopa’s 229 voting centers.
Arizona Attorney General’s investigation into the 2020 election revealed that Maricopa County failed to follow the law when transporting early ballots from drop boxes to election headquarters.
- The State estimates that up to 200,000 ballots were transported without the proper chain of custody, making these ballots vulnerable to fraud and abuse.
- Maricopa County election officials also admitted that some ballots were scanned and tabulated twice.
