In recent years, several state officials have raised concerns that some ballots could have been counted multiple times in their elections, resulting in more ballots counted than registered voters who voted. Others have raised the question of whether ballots could have been destroyed, resulting in more registered voters who voted than ballots counted.[1] Following these concerns, the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) endeavored to conduct a study with a simple goal: to match the total number of registered voters listed as voting with the total number of ballots counted in the Arizona 2022 general election. Doing so would enable us to see if the vote totals were consistent or if they revealed discrepancies.
The races for Arizona governor and Arizona attorney general were extremely tight, so we recognized that any discrepancies could have played a role in the outcome. In the attorney general race, just 280 votes divided the Democrat and Republican attorney general candidates (Snow (2023)).
We made no attempt to determine if any discrepancies were intentional or accidental. How and for whom voters voted also were not at issue. We were strictly looking to determine whether voters and vote totals were equal.
This study was conducted with a similar methodology employed in an AFPI analysis of the national 2020 general election that found vast discrepancies. AFPI repeated the study for the November 2022 general election. To answer our specific study question about potential voter discrepancies in Arizona, we focused only on the data for the four most populous Arizona counties—Maricopa, Pima, Pinal, and Yavapai—as well as on smaller populations in tribal communities, such as Apache and Coconino, where previous concerns about voting irregularities had been raised (Davidson (2020) and Smith (2020)).
After six months of persistence with these Arizona counties (full correspondence in Appendix A), the precinct-level data for the six Arizona counties was received in full. Analysis showed some precincts where there were more ballots being counted than there were registered voters listed as casting ballots and some precincts where the reverse occurred.[2] Across these counties, 6,057 more ballots were recorded as cast than there were registered voters listed as voting. In precincts where the reverse was true, 2,184 more registered voters were listed as voting than ballots shown as counted (Table 1). That results in an 8,241-vote discrepancy, or 0.36% of the total ballots counted. Some may say this is just a small discrepancy, but 0.36% amounts to 29.4 times the 280-vote difference in the Arizona attorney general race.
TOPLINE POINTS
- Following reports from other states regarding vote discrepancies, an analysis was conducted of the total number of ballots counted in the 2022 Arizona general election compared to the number of registered voters.
- A potential 8,241-vote discrepancy was discovered between the total number of registered voters listed as voting and the total number of ballots counted in the 2022 Arizona general election, about 29.4 times the 280-vote difference in the attorney general race.
- The results indicate that there were either more votes counted than registered voters who voted in the 2022 Arizona general election or that Arizona counties have failed to keep accurate records of who voted in the election. Either way, this study has discovered a concerning issue.
