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Quick Take
Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk made an unsupported claim online that a liberal group “attempted to inject chaos” into the 2024 election by dropping off 20,000 voter registrations in Maricopa County on the last eligible day. It’s unclear whether any group delivered that many forms, but experts say that amount can be processed by election offices.
Full Story
Maricopa County — Arizona’s most populous county and the fourth most populous in the U.S. — was the target of misinformation after the 2020 election due to the pivotal swing state’s importance in deciding the winner of the presidential election, as we’ve written.
Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, accused county officials of running a “corrupted election” in 2020, and he continues to spread misinformation about Maricopa County.
In June, Trump falsely suggested that Senate candidate Kari Lake lost her 2022 race for governor because there was a plot to break the county’s “Republican [voting] machines.” Some printers did produce ballots that were too light for on-site tabulators, but those ballots could have been counted later. Lake’s court challenges failed and an independent review found no evidence of wrongdoing.
Conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, who also baselessly suggested that the Democrats plotted to suppress the Republican vote in Maricopa County in the 2022 election, is again claiming that liberals are trying to disrupt Maricopa County’s election process.
Kirk, founder of the conservative student group Turning Point USA, posted on Threads that he heard reports that “a left-leaning group” dropped off 20,000 voter registration forms to Maricopa County on Oct. 7, the final day the state’s voter registrations were accepted.
“Getting reports that a left-leaning group just dropped off 20,000 voter registration forms to Maricopa County on the last day. This is almost assuredly a Democrat ‘dump’ at the end to try to inject chaos and bring litigation to give the Democrats more opportunity to manipulate the law and squeeze in more registrations,” Kirk said.
Andrew Kolvet, a spokesperson for Turning Point Action, the political advocacy arm of Turning Point USA, told us in an email that a staffer at the organization heard about the voter registration drop from a county worker and that the report may or may not be accurate. He said the staffer was not told the name of the organization that dropped off the ballots.
Kolvet said, “Taking this over from TPUSA team as this was a Turning Point Action (sister c4 org) staffer that was told this by a county worker. We hope the report is wrong. Please disprove it! This staffer was not told the name of the org so that’s why the tweet said ‘reports of a left leaning group.'”
Kolvet did not respond to follow-up questions regarding whether the “county worker” actually worked for Maricopa County Elections, or another department within the county.
A spokesperson for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office told us in an email that the office received “a significant amount of paper voter registration forms on [Oct. 7],” the voter registration deadline. But he could not confirm if a particular group dropped off 20,000 forms. “It is not unusual to receive thousands of forms in the days leading up to the registration deadline,” the spokesperson said.
On Oct. 5, the Arizona secretary of state’s office issued a notice about ongoing registration outreach efforts being conducted by the voter registration nonprofits Voter Participation Center and the Center for Voter Information. Both organizations have the same CEO, Tom Lopach, a former executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The Voter Participation Center aims to boost turnout among people of color, unmarried women and young people.
“These private organizations aim to engage Arizona voters by increasing participation in upcoming elections. VPC and CVI have sent voter registration forms to residents in all 15 counties,” the secretary of state’s notice said. The secretary of state’s office said those organizations did not use the official form created by its office, but their form is in compliance legally and will be processed by county recorders.
Increased Registration Activity at Deadline
If a group did drop off 20,000 voter registrations just before the deadline, it could perhaps cause a headache for election officials. But it wouldn’t be nefarious or illegal, nor would it sow “chaos” into the election process as Kirk asserted, election experts say.
“While receiving 20,000 at once could be unusual, it is not unlawful as long as all the forms are filled out in accordance with the law,” the spokesperson for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office said.
The spokesperson added, “We consistently see an increase in voter registration forms ahead of the voter registration deadline. We have dozens of dedicated staff members working to process [each] form.”
Groups dropping off 20,000 voter registration forms at the last minute is “not terribly unusual,” Justin Levitt, a law professor and elections law expert at Loyola Marymount University’s law school, told us. The groups conducting voter registration drives often get inundated with registration forms near the deadline, while election offices see an increase in activity among groups turning in those forms, he said.
“Voter registration deadlines reliably prompt a lot of registration activity,” Levitt said. “A feature of having a deadline is most people take that as having a prompt to respond shortly before.”
It’s not illegal either, as there’s no limit on the number of registrations that someone is allowed to drop off in Arizona, said Jim Barton, an elections lawyer and a partner at the Arizona-based law firm Barton Mendez Soto. Barton has represented clients that pushed for progressive ballot measures.
“It’s a big number but it doesn’t strike me as untoward in any way,” Barton said.
While elections officials expect and plan for registrations to come in close to deadline, and perhaps even hire extra people to account for it, it is harder for those offices to process the forms, Levitt said.
“It’s not easy on officials when a large slate comes in, but officials are also used to it,” he said. “I don’t anticipate any problems.”
Some states have tried to smooth out that registration curb, said Levitt, by implementing automatic voter registration processes, such as automatically registering people who interact with the state Department of Motor Vehicles. Arizona is not among those states, according to the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures.
When registration forms come in late, there is a possibility that more mistakes will be made by the elections office, Levitt said. Groups know this and have an interest in turning in registration forms earlier so the person who collects them can check to make sure they are accurate as possible, he said.
“Nobody has an interest in hanging on to registration forms until the last minute. That’s not a thing,” he said. “There would be no reason for a voter registration organization to have 20,000 forms that came in a month ago and be holding on to them until the last day.”
Levitt added that if a group were to turn in that many voter registrations before the deadline, those registrations would still be legal and valid.
“There’s no difference between 20,000 people submitting registrations on the last day and the group submitting 20,000 registrations on the last day,” he said. “It’s the same volume of activity, whether one person is dropping them off or if 20,000 people are dropping them off.”
“I don’t see how submitting legal forms from an eligible voter before the deadline or at the deadline amounts to manipulation of a process that is designed to accept legal forms from eligible voters up until the deadline,” Levitt said. “That’s not manipulation of the process, that’s the process.”
Barton added that registrations that come in at the last minute will still get verified by the county recorder, and if there are forms from fake or ineligible voters, those won’t be processed. He said he didn’t see any reason how this could lead to litigation as Kirk asserted.
While Kirk is wary of the influx of registrations, his organization has touted its efforts to register a large number of Arizonans.
Turning Point Action, through its get-out-the-vote initiative, Chase the Vote, “registered 3,000+ on the final day of registration,” Kolvet said. “I don’t have the number for total through cycle at this point, but our estimates are that we helped register over 1/4th of all new voter registrations in the state of Arizona since 2020. Obviously many more throughout the country.”
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
Sources
Arizona Secretary of State. Email to FactCheck.org. 9 Oct 2024.
Arizona Secretary of State. “Important Notice: Voter Registration Efforts by External Groups Not Affiliated with Arizona Secretary of State.” 5 Jun 2024.
Barton, Jim. Partner at Barton Mendez Soto law firm. Phone interview with FactCheck.org. 10 Oct 2024.
Center for Voter Information. “About Us.” Accessed 11 Oct 2024.
Cubit. Arizona Counties by Population (2024). Accessed Oct 15 2024.
Jones, Brea. “Myth of Ballot Watermarks Flushed Out Again.” FactCheck.org. 12 May 2021.
Kiely, Eugene. “Trump Spreads Election Misinformation in Key States.” FactCheck.org. 21 Jun 2024.
Kolvet, Andrew. Turning Point Action spokesperson. Email to FactCheck.org. 9 Oct 2024.
Levitt, Justin. Law professor, Loyola Marymount University, Loyola Law School. Phone interview with FactCheck.org. 11 Oct 2024.
Maricopa County Recorder’s Office. Spokesperson. Email to FactCheck.org. 9 Oct 2024.
National Conference of State Legislatures. “Automatic Voter Registration.” Updated 24 Sep 2024.
Spencer, Saranac Hale. “Ballot Printer Delayed Maricopa Voting, Contrary to Unfounded Claims.” FactCheck.org. 29 Nov 2022.
Spencer, Saranac Hale. “Sharpie Ballots Count in Arizona.” FactCheck.org. 4 Nov 2020.
Stanford Data Commons. Ranking by Population. All Counties in Arizona. Accessed 15 Oct 2024.
Statista. “The 25 largest counties in the United States in 2022, by population.” Accessed 15 Oct 2024.
Turning Point Action. “Turning Point Action’s Chase The Vote Initiative.” Accessed 11 Oct 2024.
Voter Participation Center. “Who is VPC?” Accessed 11 Oct 2024.
World Population Review. US County Populations 2024. Accessed Oct 14 2024.
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