Maricopa Recorder Tells Voters to Do More to Clean Voter Rolls

December 2, 2023 ADI Staff Reporter
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Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer advised voters this week that they needed to do more to clean the voter rolls; yet, state officials admitted they haven’t been removing ineligible voters.

Critics say this contradiction indicates that ongoing issues with ineligible voters truly lies with election officials, not the voters — as evidenced by the common, viral complaints from voters who receive multiple mail-in ballots for ineligible voters, year after year, despite following the proper procedures to cancel those registrations, year after year.

“We want YOUR help in beautifying voter rolls. High high priority. Please help us by encouraging your friends and family to go to BeBallotReady.Vote before the 2024 election season begins. Especially if you’ve moved or somebody has moved out of your house,” posted Richer on X.

It doesn’t appear to matter much whether voters have reported or will report a change of address or another’s change of address. The state’s top election officials admitted that they haven’t bothered to purge tens of thousands of ineligible voters from the rolls over this year.

The Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AFEC) reported that Secretary of State Adrian Fontes’ office identified but failed to take action on over 78,000 noncitizens or nonresidents in its last two quarterly reports to the Arizona legislature.

“We’re less than a year away from our next election, and if Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is serious about doing his job, his primary focus should be on ensuring a process where it is easy to vote and hard to cheat,” stated AFEC. “Instead, Fontes has been attempting to implement an Elections Procedures Manual (EPM) that is ripe with unlawful provisions all while ignoring a giant (and growing) elephant in the room.”

Over 53,000 of those had a driver’s license or a nonoperating license ID in another state. Over 1,000 admitted they weren’t U.S. citizens on a jury questionnaire. Over 23,000 admitted they weren’t the resident of a certain county on a jury questionnaire.

In effect, Fontes told the legislature that he and his office were working on getting around to establishing a process for cleaning up those voters. His office told lawmakers in the quarterly reports that the process was “in development,” without going into any details.

The secretary of state has been in office for nearly a year, and no notices have been sent to those self-reported, ineligible voters, no voter registrations have been placed on inactive status, and, especially, no voter registrations have been canceled. Arizona’s Chief Election Officer has neglected to fulfill a crucial part of what he was elected to do.

Instead, it appears Fontes has busied himself speaking tours and press appearances as of late.

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