A new investigative film by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a public interest law firm dedicated to election integrity, has revealed the group’s findings following its inspection of hundreds of commercial addresses listed on Arizona voter registrations as residences. The group found gas stations, liquor stores, abortion clinics, vacant lots, a strip club, an Arizona Cardinals training facility, and more all listed as voters’ residences.
Under Arizona law (A.R.S. 16-152), voters are required to register to vote where they reside, and the form even specifically forbids the use of business addresses or P.O. Boxes. Under the text of the law, voters must provide, “The complete address of the registrant’s actual place of residence, including street name and number, apartment or space number, city or town and zip code, or such description of the location of the residence that it can be readily ascertained or identified.”
PILF began the full film with a simple statement indicating that this issue was brought to the awareness of Arizona officials years ago. In on screen text, they wrote, “After years of failing to identify and remove commercial addresses from the voter roll, PILF is documenting this widespread problem to force Arizona election officials to investigate these addresses.”
PILF President J. Christian Adams said in a press release,
“We have been warning Arizona election officials about people registered to vote from commercial addresses since before the 2020 election. 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.”
The foundation observed that that the illegal use of commercial addresses for voter registration is hardly the only issue with the Arizona voter rolls in 2024, noting several issues that AZ Free News has reported on in the past. These issues include the “glitch” that incorrectly marked 98,000 registrants as having provided proof of citizenship, the 2022 controversy over ballot printing errors at 70 Maricopa County voting centers that caused extensive delays and eroded voter confidence, and the Attorney General investigation of the 2020 election that showed as many as 200,000 ballots were transported illegally without the proper chain of custody.
The investigation by PILF closely resembles a similar undertaking by the investigative team of Louder with Crowder in 2021 following the controversial 2020 Presidential Election in which reporters for the show exposed voters registered under “addresses that do not exist,” including empty lots, highway overpasses and yes, commercial locations numbering in the thousands.
Only United States citizens should be voting in our elections. That shouldn’t be a controversial statement. But of course, it’s 2024, and the Left hasn’t instituted its open border policies under the Biden-Harris administration for nothing.
The fact is that U.S. citizens can’t go into France, Australia, or any other country throughout the world and vote in their elections. Why should citizens from other countries be allowed to vote in our elections?
While it’s certainly illegal for non-citizens to vote here, the law is only as good as the mechanism in place to make sure it’s followed. That’s why it is critical for the integrity of our nation’s elections that voters prove their citizenship prior to voting. And the SAVE Act is a much-needed remedy that would address this issue head on.
Sponsored by Rep. Chip Roy from Texas, who has certainly experienced firsthand the issues that arise from the current surge at the border, the SAVE Act would require individuals to provide documentary proof of citizenship (DPOC) in order to vote in federal elections. It’s a constitutional solution to keep non-citizens from voting.
But given Congress’s propensity for inaction, states should not wait around to see if our federal lawmakers will pass the SAVE Act or another reasonable solution. Arizona has been a leader on this issue for years and has already enacted a comprehensive solution that every state should follow.
Tonight, the presidential candidates will have their first debate. But there is one critical election issue the American people are not debating at all. They agree that non-U.S. citizens should not vote in U.S. elections.
This is a convenient opinion for Americans to hold as it is also the law.
The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) and other federal codes and state constitutions require that only citizens vote in our elections. This is unequivocal. It is in writing. It is common sense.
The problem with laws is that people break them — including noncitizens who commit one federal crime by registering to vote and then another by actually voting. But because federal statutes are silent on requiring documentary proof of citizenship for either step, states have not demanded citizenship proof for voter registration on federal forms.
These registration forms are provided to people applying for a driver’s license or state ID with no consideration to whether that person is a citizen or not. And the entire citizen “confirmation” process is an innocuous checkbox on the federal form that many registrants fill in just because it’s there.
For noncitizen newcomers not proficient in English, all they know is that a government official handed them a form to fill out with a box to check — or that a liberal activist group told them to check it.
Election at Risk
Earlier this year, Tea Party Patriots commissioned a poll of citizens who vote regularly and found that 86 percent believe “proof of U.S. citizenship should be required to register to vote in American elections” and “only U.S. citizens should vote in elections in America.”
Who is the clueless other 13 percent? Leftwing political elites, their friends in the deceitful media, and the current occupants of the White House and vice president’s mansion, that’s who.
How do we know this? By following the SAVE Act and seeing who opposes it.
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives in July, hung out for a while in the do-nothing Senate, and may now bounce back to the House as an add-on to a must-pass bill.
House Speaker Mike Johnson and congressional Republicans acknowledge that noncitizens are registering to vote in numbers not seen before — and those illegal votes, cast in specific cities or counties, could sway the entire federal election.
The SAVE Act closes federal loopholes that allow noncitizens to register to vote by requiring election officials to ask about citizenship during registration, and potential registrants to provide documentary proof of citizenship. It gives states unfettered access to existing federal databases to check citizenship status against voter rolls.
It is a “must pass” all by itself — to protect our constitutional republic where the people’s will should matter most.
SAVE the Vote
Noncitizens aren’t the only ones paying consequences for unlawful registration and voting. Punishments include jail, fines, and immediate removal procedures. Naturalization is also permanently denied for applicants who show up on voter rolls, and they are subject to deportation.
Then there’s the American voter. Every time a noncitizen illegally votes — intentionally or unknowingly — a citizen’s ballot is removed from the count. Americans have clearly signaled they know this is happening, they don’t like it, and they do not want to pay that price.
But there is nothing in law allowing action against election officials who fail to uphold laws on citizenship requirements, or DMV bureaucrats who knowingly hand voter registration forms to noncitizens. The SAVE Act will empower citizens to bring civil suits in these cases and includes penalties for those enabling or encouraging noncitizens to register and to vote.
Progressive politocrats and their media friends offer two deceptive talking points about noncitizen voting.
One is “It’s against the law anyway.” It is also against the law to steal a car, commit murder, and jaywalk. But perhaps worse is their casual quip, dripping with moral relativism, that illegal immigrants voting “is not widespread.”
Both these ridiculous notions can be easily repudiated.
Proof
The federal government recently indicted a group of noncitizens from 15 countries on federal voting charges. Virginia recently purged 6,500 noncitizens from its voter rolls. Texas removed 6,300 people — 30% of whom had voting records. A 2014 academic journal reported that 6.4% of noncitizens voted in 2008.
There are about 24 million noncitizens currently in the U.S. If they voted only at the same rate of 6.4% this year as they did in 2008, they would account for 1.5 million votes.
Within 39 months of the Biden/Harris administration (including our “border czar”) coming into office, the foreign-born population of our nation increased by 6.6 million; at least 4.6million of those are illegal immigrants.
Flyers have been found being widely distributed on the Mexican side of the U.S.\Mexican border encouraging illegal immigrants to vote for Biden in 2024. Biden issued Executive Order 14019 in March 2021, demanding anyone approaching the federal government for services (with no citizenship caveats) be provided a voter registration form. The Biden/Harris administration officially opposes the SAVE Act. Is all of that coincidence? And what could possibly go wrong?
If we learned nothing else from the presidential election of 2020, we know Americans of both political parties are profoundly disturbed by foreign interference of any kind in our elections.
Noncitizen voting is foreign influence.
We live in a representative republic. It’s beyond time our representatives listen to what we are telling them about the sanctity of our elections. Let’s get on with ensuring that only Americans vote in American elections.
Kerri Toloczko is the executive director of Election Integrity Network and senior advisor to the Only Citizens Vote Coalition. Both of these nonprofit organizations are dedicated to protecting all ballots and ensuring that elections follow the law. They are also leading organizers of the 2024 Only Citizens Vote Week, which runs from September 15 to September 21.
UPDATE: The Arizona GOP and Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell issued a joint announcement on Friday clarifying that the bipartisan observation program used in this year’s primary will be in place for the general election. State Representative Alexander Kolodin walked back the statements reported criticizing Mitchell’s office.
Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell has found herself embroiled in the hot-button issue of election integrity.
The attorney’s office declined to back a reform deal led by Republican State Representative Alexander Kolodin between Runbeck — the private election services company for Maricopa and other counties — and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.
The deal, as part of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) secured earlier this year between the state legislature and Runbeck, would have implemented a bipartisan observation program and enhanced security, legislative audits of Runbeck software, published an election workflow document publicly, and provided access to historical 2022 election data.
#AZLeg & Runbeck negotiated this MOU in good faith for Open & Transparent Elections.
An expanded Observer program, implemented in the 2024 Primary, increased Voter Confidence.
— Maricopa County Republican Committee | MCRC (@MaricopaGOP) September 6, 2024
Sources told the Arizona Daily Independent that Kolodin had asked Mitchell to “talk sense” to the supervisors. When the deal fell through, Kolodin criticized Mitchell’s office publicly.
Kolodin told “The Afternoon Addiction” radio host Garret Lewis on Thursday that, according to Runbeck, Maricopa County Attorney’s Office Thomas (Tom) Liddy pulled the county out of the MOU, and implied that the board hadn’t voted on the decision.
“Technically, the board of supervisors has to vote,” said Kolodin. If there’s one thing I understand very well is that when it comes to elections Tom Liddy tells the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors what to do.”
Then, Kolodin advised voters to abstain from voting for Mitchell and implied she was a Democrat rather than a Republican.
“If we’re going to have Democrats running that office we might as well have the ones with the ‘D’ next to their name,” said Kolodin.
Kolodin also claimed that the board declined to approve the MOU because voters had declined to reelect them, the ones who worked well with Liddy.
“This is a big way for Tom Liddy to tell everybody eff you for taking all of his allies and control over the county away,” said Kolodin.
Mitchell disputed Kolodin’s remarks. She said that the board had declined to change the terms of its contract with Runbeck to align with the MOU back in March, and that her office didn’t have the authority to decline contractual changes the way Kolodin effectively claimed it did.
Mitchell said MCAO’s authority only amounted to providing legal advice to the supervisors.
“Here are the facts: The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors has a contract with Runbeck to print ballots and provide other services. Rep. Kolodin attempted to negotiate a separate contract with Runbeck that would change the terms of the contracts for both the Board of Supervisors and Runbeck. On March 11, 2024, the Board of Supervisors chose not to accept those changes after considering them. Rep. Kolodin has misrepresented the situation by claiming that it was the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office (MCAO) that rejected this change in terms. Quite the contrary: The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office has NO authority to accept or reject the terms. MCAO only can advise the Board of Supervisors as to what the law allows the Board to do. Rep. Kolodin’s misinformation campaign is false, irresponsible, and incendiary.”
.@realAlexKolodin is spreading falsehoods about the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office (MCAO). He is doing so even though I personally called him today to set the record straight.
Despite being told the truth, Rep Kolodin has decided to persist in spreading false information.…
— Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell (@Rachel1Mitchell) September 6, 2024
Mitchell’s statement didn’t sway some local party leaders. Maricopa County Republican Committee (MCRC) blamed Mitchell in a press release for the deal’s failure.
“The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors (MCBOS), acting under the advice of Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell’s Office, just pulled the plug on [the] Election Integrity measures which Runbeck had previously agreed [to] in a Memorandum of Understanding,” stated MCRC.
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
The people of Arizona deserve elections that are free, fair, transparent, and lawful. As the top election official in our state, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes should be working every day to ensure this happens. And he should be providing an Elections Procedures Manual (EPM) that gives impartial direction to county recorders to ensure uniform and correct implementation of election law.
This shouldn’t be that hard…or controversial.
But Adrian Fontes took it upon himself to produce one of the most radical EPMs in Arizona’s history. In fact, several of the “rules” in his EPM even go as far as to criminalize activity that is protected under the First Amendment—creating an unconstitutional chilling effect on protected political speech. Apparently, Adrian Fontes hasn’t read the United States Constitution or the Arizona Constitution.
Because of this illegal EPM, we sued him. And last week, a Maricopa County Superior Court ruled in our favor, finding that Fontes’ EPM contains speech restrictions that violate the Arizona Constitution, misstatements and modifications of statutes, and failures to identify distinctions between guidance and legal mandates.
So, how did Fontes respond? Did he realize the error of his ways? Will he now properly understand his role and amend the EPM to align with the law? No. Instead Adrian Fontes has responded how you would expect someone to respond when he knows he can’t win. He’s resorted to maligning our organization in the media…
