Authorities in Pima County, Arizona have completed an extensive review of incidents in which voters cast more than one ballot apiece — concluding that not a single case warranted criminal charges and that there was no evidence of any sort of election-rigging conspiracy. The investigation by the Pima County Attorney’s Office (PCAO) dealt with 151 incidents, and Pima County Attorney Laura Conover explained that investigators found genuine confusion among the factors leading individual voters to cast multiple ballots.
‘While PCAO’s investigation documented instances of these voters knowingly submitting more than one ballot, there is little to no evidence that they acted with the awareness that their actions would or could result in multiple votes being counted. What our investigation revealed was the genuine confusion about the electoral process, particularly relating to mail-in and provisional ballots, and the genuine fear, for a variety of reasons, that their initial vote would not count.’
History has never been kind to those who have sided with voter suppression over voters’ rights. And it will be even less kind for those who side with election subversion.
— President Biden (@POTUS) January 15, 2022
Arizona is one of the states that has been repeatedly targeted by former President Trump and his allies in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election over fraud supposedly unfolding there, but no legitimate evidence has ever emerged showing the sort of systematic fraud that Trump has claimed was present. A press release from the Pima County Attorney’s Office regarding this investigation noted that multiple ballots from individual voters were not all counted; as they explained it: “[The] additional ballots cast in these incidents were not counted in the final tally of votes and did not impact the election results for any candidate or ballot measure.” The county attorney’s office also noted that they “uncovered no conspiratorial acts in the incidents investigated.”
The 2020 election in Arizona's largest county was administered properly and not marred by fraud, the Republican-led local government has concluded.
Their 93-page report debunks — one by one — lies pushed by the GOP-led state Senate and Trump. https://t.co/Nutlkh3lTW
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 8, 2022
Although voters admitted to casting more than one ballot each, the office explained that “without fraudulent intent, there is no substantial likelihood of conviction of any of the voters investigated in these incidents.” Conover observed that investigators involved in the inquiry “were protecting the very heart of democracy and confirming that the southern Arizona vote was free of interference,” adding: “I can’t think of more noble work.” Read more here.
from @AP "A review of potential voter fraud cases in the 2020 general election in Arizona’s second-largest county ended Friday with an announcement by prosecutors that none of the 151 cases they reviewed merited criminal charges."https://t.co/KGG5QiQLjX
— Richard Lardner (@rplardner) January 14, 2022
Results of investigations into the integrity of last year’s election have reached similar conclusions elsewhere in the country. An investigation by the office of the Texas Secretary of State recently culminated in preliminary findings that there was no evidence of systematic election fraud in Dallas, Harris, Tarrant, and Collin counties, which were the ones singled out in the probe. Instead, an NBC affiliate in the Dallas area explained that a “preliminary report found that out of those nearly 4 million votes in those four counties, there were 17 deceased voters and 60 cross-state duplicate votes” — and that’s it. (Cross-state duplicate votes refer to votes cast by individuals who voted in more than one state.) No systematic fraud here!
On NPR, Trump also tossed one of his lawyers under the bus.
Kory Langhofer told a judge he wasn’t actually alleging fraud. Trump:
“When you look at Langhofer, I disagree with him as an attorney. I did not think he was a good attorney to hire. I don't know what his game is.”
— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) January 12, 2022
