Maricopa County: 23,344 Mail-In Ballots Voted from a Prior Address ‘Legal Under Federal Election Law’

AP Photo/Ted S. Warren
AP Photo/Ted S. Warren
Michael Patrick Leahy

Maricopa County officials tweeted Friday, 30 minutes into the Arizona Senate hearing on the report of the Forensic Election Audit of the county’s 2020 election results, it “is legal under federal election law” that 23,344 mail-in ballots were voted from a prior address.

In its first comment about the issue, the official Maricopa County Twitter account tweeted:

CLAIM: 23,344 mail-in ballots voted from a prior address. BOTTOM LINE: Cyber Ninjas still don’t understand this is legal under federal election law. To label it a “critical” concern is either intentionally misleading or staggeringly ignorant. AZ senators should know this too.

Maricopa County officials did not offer the details of the federal election law under which the county claimed 23,344 mail-in ballots voted from a prior address is legally authorized.

The official Maricopa County Twitter account then offered four explanations for 23,344 mail-in ballots voted from a prior address that was highlighted as a ballot issue “critical” to the outcome of the 2020 election in the report released on Friday at the hearing in the Arizona State Senate:

  • 1) Military and overseas voters can cast a “federal only ballot” despite living outside the U.S. The address tied to their ballot would be their prior address in AZ.
  • 2) People are allowed to move from one house to another (or even one state to another) in October and November of an election year (yes, shocking!). If the driver’s license address matches the voter registration address, they are still allowed to vote.
  • 3) For the November General Election Maricopa County had 20,933 one-time temporary address requests. In addition, snowbirds and college students tend to have forwarding addresses when they are out of the county.
  • 4) Mail-in ballots are not forwarded to another address.

Here’s what the report, Maricopa County Forensic Audit, Volume III: Result Details, said about those 23,344 mail-in ballots voted from a prior address:

Mail-in ballots were cast under voter registration IDs for people that may not have received their ballots by mail because they had moved, and no one with the same last name remained at the address. Through extensive data analysis we have discovered approximately 23, 344 votes that may have met this condition. If a registered voter does not have a secondary mailing address listed with the county and no longer lives at the address listed on their voter registration, they should not receive their mail-in ballot by automatic postal forwarding. In certain circumstances, however, it may be possible for them to receive a ballot, for example, if they know the present occupant, or if the ballot is improperly forwarded. . .

The Final Voted File, or VM55, was cross-checked against a commercially available data source provided by Melissa called Personator. Personator is a best-in-class identity and address validation tool. It confirms that an individual is associated with an address, indicates prior and current addresses, tracks when and where the individual moves, tracks date-of-birth and date-of-death. To accomplish this, it utilized both private and government data sources such as the US Postal Service’s National Change of Address (NCOA) service and the Social Security Administration’s Master Death List

Addresses were not included in the results if there was a valid secondary mailing address as part of the voting record. Only moves prior to October 5, 2020 are included in the move numbers. (emphasis added)

“There are potential ways that a voter could receive their ballot which in some cases would not violate the law. Additional investigation by the Attorney General is recommended for any conclusive determination,‘ the report stated. (emphasis added)

The report also broke down the 23,344 mail-in ballots voted from a prior address into three categories:

  • 15,035 mail-in votes from voters who moved within Maricopa County prior to the registration deadline.
  • 6,591 mail-in votes from voters who moved out of Arizona prior to the registration deadline.
  • 1,718 mail-in votes from voters who moved within Arizona but out of Maricopa prior to the registration deadline.

“The county’s response demonstrates they are more interested in protecting their reputation than conducting a transparent and accountable election. They simply provide possible explanations rather than answers. They do not know,” Phill Kline, executive director of the Amistad Project, told Breitbart News.

Joe Biden was certified as the winner of Arizona’s 11 Electoral College votes over former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election by a margin of 10,457 votes out of 3.3 million votes cast in the state.

You can see the series of tweets from the official Maricopa County Twitter account here:

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