EXCLUSIVE: Arizona Election Worker Retails Voter Fraud Investigation

In an unique interview given to The Epoch Occasions, the recorder on the Yuma County Sherrif’s Workplace provided extra insights into the dangers of fraudulent registration kinds main as much as the 2022 Major Election and the efforts she and her crew are engaged on to enhance the method.

“Our major is Aug. 2. We’ve got acquired registration kinds which might be fraudulently accomplished,” Yuma County recorder Robyn Stallworth Pouquette, who offers oversight into the county’s voter registration and early voting, advised The Epoch Occasions in an interview on June 7. “It’s been a prevalent downside in Yuma County, and it’s very unlucky.”

Pouquette’s allegations come along with different witness studies and allegations of voting fraud which might be the topic of 16 open investigations on the sheriff’s workplace.

The noticed “sample of fraudulent voter registration kinds,” in response to a Could 11 assertion made by the sheriff’s workplace, contains alleged impersonation fraud, false registrations, duplicate voting, and fraudulent use of absentee ballots.

Whereas Pouquette couldn’t present any names as a result of the investigation is ongoing, she confirmed to The Epoch Occasions that most of the anomalous instances pertain to non-profits working on a nationwide scale, which she believes to be “political advocacy teams.”

“We’re extraordinarily inspired that the Yuma County Sheriff’s Workplace and Recorder’s Workplace are actually working collectively to analyze people concerned within the subversion of elections,” Catherine Engelbrecht, founding father of election integrity group True The Vote, advised The Epoch Occasions in an announcement in Could. “We’ve spent concentrated time in Yuma County and have supplied vital data to each state and federal authorities. What has been taking place in Yuma County is going on throughout the nation. The focusing on of weak communities and voter abuse have to be stopped.”

“It is vitally troublesome to determine who’s submitting these fraudulent kinds. However I’m conscious of actions of third-party teams and I shared that data with the sheriff’s workplace,” Pouquette stated of what she’s witnessed.

Uncommon Indicators

Pouquette stated that whereas third-party organizations who solicit voter registrations serve an essential position in helping voters, they’re additionally a degree of vulnerability within the election course of if the ballots they assist voters submit are fraudulent—because of intentional or unintentional misrepresentation of a voter’s needs.

“I consider it’s a vulnerability of the system, within the sense that fraudulent voter registrations can disrupt the respectable energetic registration of an eligible voter,” she stated. “It’s a very disruptive course of for the workplace once we needs to be specializing in audits and ensuring that we’re auditing our information previous to the distribution of ballots.”

“I’m very captivated with it as a result of there isn’t a regulation that precludes voter registration actions [by] third-party teams,” Pouquette stated. “I really feel that voter registration solicitors needs to be held accountable to the next customary.”

After these third-party organizations drop the voter registration kinds they’ve collected on the recorder’s workplace, Pouquette and her crew would run them via a statewide database to cross-check the figuring out data on every type to the voter.

Nevertheless, Pouquette stated she’s observed uncommon indicators with a number of the kinds she’s acquired.

“I might instantly see that there have been particular person names in these kinds that had been those who I knew had been already registered. However they had been using actual folks’s names with faux addresses and pretend dates of beginning,” she stated. “One in every of them was our pediatrician. One in every of them was a neighborhood lawyer who I had been an acquaintance of and has handed away for a while. One was a minor that I consider was across the age of 14 … So it simply grew to become very clear that there was an issue.

“After which, we’re getting 5, six registration kinds for a similar individual. As you possibly can think about, that’s the place we really feel that there’s an intentional effort to disrupt the system and determine vulnerabilities,” Pouquette added.

Pouquette stated they’ve observed over 100 such anomalies within the registration course of main as much as the 2022 primaries and have despatched letters to every of the addresses indicated on the registration kinds as required by regulation.

“I merely discover it unlucky that it’s a requirement as a result of we all know that we’re sending them to those who now we have a powerful perception to be nonexistent,” she stated. “We needs to be engaged on credible, actual registrations that now we have in our county, versus spending any time or sources—which is definitely vital time and sources—on this sort of exercise.”

New Legislation Proposed

Pouquette added that after she observed a sample of fraudulent registration in 2016, she and her crew started to work with the Arizona legislature to develop new legal guidelines to “outline parameters for regulation of voter registration solicitation.” Nevertheless, she stated the efforts have been largely unsuccessful.

She and her crew, via the Flinn-Brown Fellowship, put collectively provisions that Arizona Senate Republicans included in a invoice launched in February 2022, SB1629, which might maintain third-party registration solicitors accountable.

“[The bill] required that third-party registration solicitors flip within the kinds inside 5 days in order that there’s a timeframe on accountability and any fraudulent type be subjected to a class-6 felony,” Pouquette stated. “And as you possibly can think about, it was very controversial.”

The invoice additionally requires anybody amassing greater than 25 voter registration kinds to determine themselves with the Secretary of State’s workplace so the recorder’s workplace would have the flexibility to contact them for any points with the kinds they turned in. The invoice failed its third studying in March and is ready to be reconsidered for an additional studying within the Senate.

“We don’t wish to diminish the work that third-party teams do … to solicit voter registration. I consider that that’s essential and we must always have teams which might be in a position to do this. I simply merely really feel that we must always place accountability measures that … professionalize the method to supply that belief to the neighborhood. I merely felt that it was a step in the correct path for accountability,” she stated of the invoice.

“And I do consider that, once more, the work that’s put in—to make each single effort to not permit these [fraudulent] registrations to show into ballots—is difficult and time-consuming, very, very straining on sources,” she added. “And these are the workers and election officers that ought to diligently be engaged on administering a safe election and never coping with felony exercise like that.”

‘A Few Unhealthy Actors’

Pouquette hoped to make clear that not all third-party teams that register voters are disruptive to the election course of.

“So even just a few unhealthy actors, as you possibly can think about, contribute such a adverse gentle on the method total, which impacts my workplace and the general public belief within the electoral course of … the opposite third-party teams which might be making vital efforts to have interaction with voters and help in, you realize, the democratic course of.”

“I at all times inform folks they need to be very proud to vote in Arizona, whatever the negativity swirling round elections, as a result of we work actually exhausting. So I invite folks in to see the method right here from their floor ground to essentially perceive what we do to confirm and over confirm and confirm third time and audit. These are simply common practices taking place every day in the course of the cycle right here,” Pouquette stated.

“I simply actually really feel that that will get neglected; you realize, how daring election officers are, how courageous they’re, and doing this sort of work each single day, regardless of the crucial response.”