CLAIM: Arizona’s largest county in the 2020 election received and counted 74,000 mail-in ballots that had no record of ever being sent out to voters.
THE FACTS: False. The claim mischaracterizes reports that are intended to help political parties track early voters for their get-out-the-vote efforts, not tally mail-in ballots through Election Day. The reports don’t represent all mail-in ballots sent out and received, so the numbers aren’t expected to match up, according to Maricopa County officials and outside experts.
Logan based his false claim on two types of early voting reports issued by Maricopa County: EV32 files and EV33 files. He claimed that EV32 files are “supposed to give a record of when a mail-in ballot is sent” and EV33 files are “supposed to give a record of when the mail-in ballot is received.”
That’s not accurate, according to Maricopa County officials, who tweeted on Friday that “the EV32 Returns & EV33 files are not the proper files to refer to for a complete accumulating of all early ballots sent and received.”
Instead, the EV32 and EV33 files are reports created for political parties to aid them in their get-out-the-vote efforts during early voting, according to Tammy Patrick, a senior adviser at the Democracy Fund and a former Maricopa County elections official. Arizona law requires county recorders to provide this data to political parties and candidates, Patrick said.
Arizona reports both mail-in ballots and early in-person votes at voting centers as early votes, so both are included in the data in files EV32 and EV33, Patrick said.
The EV32 file includes all requests that voters make for early ballots, either by mail or in person, up to 11 days before Election Day, Patrick said. The EV33 file includes returned early ballots up to the Monday before Election Day.
That means there is a 10-day period between the final day of each report, during which thousands of mail-in votes are submitted and thousands of additional voters go to voting centers, request early ballots in person and submit them. Furthermore, the files don’t include any early ballots that came in on Election Day.
“To use these files as an attempt to understand the number of voters who were mailed a ballot or who returned a ballot is misguided,” Patrick said. “That information is obtained from the Voted File, not a GOTV tool for the political parties and candidates.” “GOTV” is short for “get out the vote.”
Let's all sit here and wait for the apologies from our resident Trump boosters on the boards. Won't be long I'm sure.
