Complaints Emerge About Thousands of Newly Found Deactivated Voters Appearing on Voter Rolls Right Before Arizona Republicans Lost

Rachel Alexander

Complaints are circulating that the number of voters on inactive status in Maricopa County increased between April and the general election this year. One of the Republican candidates who believed this may have influenced his race is Christian Lamar, who lost by 1,990 votes in the State House race in Phoenix-area LD 2.

Lamar told The Arizona Sun Times, “So far, a majority of 7,400 ‘newly found’ voters in my district still have a status of deactivated or removed. Also, they are mostly party not determined (unaffiliated) and more Democrats than Republicans in ‘newly found’ voters. From mostly blue precincts too.”

He asked the Maricopa County Recorder for more information about the high numbers of inactive voters and was told there are currently 29,765 in his district of 161,134 registered voters, a number he finds “strangely high” considering about 82,000 voted.

Lamar said he is trying to figure out that and other numerical oddities he’s spotted regarding voting in his race. He received a copy of LD 2’s voter file from the Maricopa County Recorder and is determining how many inactive voters cast ballots.

A registered voter becomes placed on the inactive list when the recorder tries mailing them election materials twice, and the mail is returned to them as a bad address. The voter will no longer receive early ballots or election materials, but they can still vote. If they don’t vote within the next four years after being placed on the inactive list, their registration will change from inactive to canceled. Inactive voters vote in far lower numbers than active voters, so Lamar is concerned that a large portion of them voted.

Lamar contacted the Maricopa County Recorder on November 29, asking about the discrepancy. He pointed out that when he first requested voter registration data from the county in March, shortly after the statewide redistricting, he was told there were 146,042 registered voters in his district.

However, when he requested the voter file again, dated November 8, it jumped to 161,134 voters, an increase of over 15,000. Only 7,669 new voters registered to vote in LD 2 in 2022, so Lamar asked the county where the remaining 7,423 votes came from, which he noticed mainly were inactive voters.

Lamar told The Sun Times that the steep jump in numbers was strange.

“It seems abnormal given that when we discussed newly registered voters in our district the numbers were not very high on a monthly basis,” he said.

After Lamar reminded the recorder’s office multiple times over email, a spokesperson finally responded to him on December 5 and said his questions were shared with their “Subject Matter Expert” and the “office will reach out with additional information once it becomes available.”

After Lamar kept reminding the spokesperson, the office responded more fully on December 8, reiterating its earlier message that there were 146,042 registered voters in LD 2 in March and stating that the number on October 17 had increased to 160,927, which included both active and inactive voters. Lamar pressed the spokesperson on whether the March number included inactive registrations, and the response was no.

Lamar said only 1,990 votes are separating him from the “establishment Republican” in the race and 4,100 votes from the Democrat in the race (only two of the three can win the two slots available). He told The Sun Times that Democratic leadership instructed Democrat voters to single-shot Democrat Rep. Judy Schwiebert, so it didn’t make sense that almost equal numbers of voters split three-way between the three candidates, with Schweibert at 35.17 percent, Republican Justin Wilmeth at 33.29 percent, and Lamar at 31.54 percent.

Leo Donofrio, a retired attorney who has been tracking Arizona’s 2022 election anomalies on Twitter, observed that similarly, across Maricopa County, the number of inactive voters significantly increased this year. The number almost doubled between April and the general election. There were 278,570 inactive voters in April, 416,121 at the primary election, and 503,741 at the general election.

This is unlike previous elections. In the last comparable election, the 2018 midterm, Maricopa County inactive voters increased from 261,973 in March of that year to 302,686 for the general election. Donofrio said during a video that it doesn’t make any sense because every election, the population goes up so the number of active voters should increase. In 2018, the number of active voters in Maricopa County increased between March and the general election by 61,205. In 2022, the number of active voters in Maricopa County decreased by 157,403.

This year, inactive voters statewide increased from 419,142 to 689,231. Other counties did not show similar sharp increases. Pima County inactive voters increased between January and the general election by about 9,000 voters, less than a 15 percent increase. Mohave County’s inactive voters increased by around 3,000 voters, about 25 percent.

Arizona congressional candidate Josh Barnett filed a lawsuit on November 29 requesting that Arizona’s election results be annulled, citing the large increase in inactive voters. Liz Harrington, a spokesperson for former President Donald Trump, tweeted, “Lawsuit filed in Maricopa County reveals ‘steroid-like injection ‘ of 225,171 ‘inactive’ voters just before Nov. 8.” She added in a follow-up tweet, “This allowed for: An inflated turnout rate. Headaches for those deemed ‘inactive’ at the polls. Possibility of throwing out votes if the arcane Election Procedures Manual, written by Katie Hobbs, was not followed by poll workers who were not trained on inactive voters.”

A judge dismissed Barnett’s lawsuit as premature, stating that the law allows election challenges to be filed after the state certifies the election. These primary challenges to the election are now being filed since the certification took place on December 5.

Lead Stories published a fact check on Donofrio’s observations, declaring that the sharp increase in inactive voters did “NOT show evidence of criminal intent in Arizona 2022 election.” However, the article did not analyze whether any other types of laws were broken and did not address why there was such a significant increase this year while active registrations decreased. The publication interviewed Justin Heywood, a special assistant to the recorder, who merely reiterated that the county sends out letters to voters and if they don’t respond twice they are put on the inactive list.

Lamar said he would continue investigating the surge of inactive voters and why.

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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Christian Lamar” by Christian Lamar. Background Photo “Arizona Capitol” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.

 

 

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