No evidence Arizona counted 10,000 illegal votes in 2020 election

Social media users are sharing a two-year-old video alongside renewed claims that more than 10,000 non-citizens voted in Arizona in the 2020 presidential election. But the assertion has been rejected multiple times in audits, which have verified President Joe Biden's victory in the US state and found no evidence to support that figure.

"WOW! OVER 10,000 ILLEGAL ALIENS USED THE SAME SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER TO VOTE IN 2020 IN ARIZONA! Congress knew this & certified the results anyway," says an August 17, 2024 X post with tens of thousands of interactions.

The same clip and claim have circulated elsewhere on X, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Gettr, LinkedIn and other news websites -- including in French.

Biden won Arizona by more than 10,000 votes in November 2020, according to the state's official tally. Multiple county-level audits and an investigation by Arizona's attorney general yielded no evidence of a conspiracy to rig the race, and numerous legal challenges to the results were thrown out (archived here and here).

Still, misinformation about voter fraud has recirculated online ahead of the showdown between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump this fall.  AFP has debunked several claims that non-citizens are registering to vote in the upcoming election, and independent analyses have found only a handful of documented cases of non-citizens voting in past federal elections. 

The narrative about 10,000 illegitimate ballots is similarly baseless.

'Utter rubbish'

The footage shared online was originally published in June 2022 by the conservative Right Side Broadcast Media. It features Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, an inventor who promoted several election-related conspiracy theories after the 2020 election.

In the video, Pulitzer claims without evidence that around 10,000 migrants obtained the same Social Security number to work in Arizona, which they later used to get driver's licenses and register to vote.

"Let's think of a chicken processor," Pulitzer said, referencing a debunked conspiracy theory that ballots were destroyed in a poultry farm fire.

"They will bring in hundreds of illegals. They will spread them out across all of these plants and factories, giving them jobs. They're all using the same Social Security number."

The footage was taken at a June 2022 event in Scottsdale, Arizona about supposed ballot tampering in 2020. Among those in attendance were Kari Lake and Mark Finchem, then candidates for Arizona governor and secretary of state, respectively.

Cyber Ninjas, a now-defunct Florida-based firm, hired Pulitzer to assist with the Arizona state Senate's 2021 audit of election results in Maricopa County, home of Phoenix. He claimed to have invented a process called "kinematic artifact detection" that he said could help determine if ballots had been manipulated by scanning folds and marks on the paper.

However, an investigator hired by the state Senate to double-check Pulitzer's work later called it "utter rubbish" and "painful to read," pointing out multiple flaws in Pulitzer's methodology.

In September 2021, Arizona state Republicans -- who ordered and financed the review -- published the findings from Cyber Ninjas, which found an additional 99 votes for Biden and 261 fewer for former president Trump.

AFP contacted Pulitzer for comment, but a response was not forthcoming.

Citizenship required to vote

Migrants legally working in the United States can apply for Social Security numbers to report their wages for taxation and determine their eligibility for government benefits. 

However, such cards are not proof of citizenship -- and those issued to people who are not citizens or permanent residents include a disclaimer (archived here and here).

Foreign workers can obtain driver's licenses in Arizona, but they must present a document proving they are in the country legally.

Regarding elections, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (archived here) requires all states to use a common form on which prospective voters in federal contests must attest under penalty of perjury that they are US citizens.

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (archived here) also "explicitly prohibits non-citizens from voting in federal elections," Rachel Orey, senior associate director of the Bipartisan Policy Center's Elections Project (archived here), previously told AFP.

"Falsely claiming US citizenship can result in fines, imprisonment, deportation, ineligibility for future immigration, and/or revocation of legal status," Orey said, adding that "deterrence is an important factor in discouraging attempts by noncitizens to register and vote."

Arizona law requires voters to provide "satisfactory evidence" that they are US citizens before they can cast their ballots. If someone registering to vote has not submitted proof of citizenship but attests to that fact, they are considered a "federal-only voter," meaning they can only vote in presidential and congressional races (archived here and here).

Sierra Ciaramella, a spokeswoman for the Maricopa County Recorder's Office, told AFP that when someone registers to vote with an Arizona driver's license, officials use data from the state Motor Vehicle Division and the US Social Security Administration to determine eligibility.

Ciaramella said she is "not aware" of any information corroborating Pulitzer's claim. She said only 4,484 federal-only ballots were cast in Maricopa County in the 2020 general election (archived here).

AFP contacted the Social Security Administration for comment, but a response was not forthcoming.