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- Pima County officials examined 151 potential incidents of voter fraud, none of which resulted in charges.
- It was the latest example of Arizona officials rebutting claims of mass fraud in the state.
- The announcement was made Friday, a day before Trump appeared in the state and pushed fraud claims.
The vast majority of voter fraud claims being investigated in Arizona were dismissed with no criminal charges brought, officials announced Friday, a day before former President Donald Trump arrived for a rally in the state.
Investigators in Pima County, which includes Tucson, examined 151 incidents of residents casting more than one ballot in the 2020 election, none of which resulted in criminal prosecution, the Pima County Attorney Office said in a statement.
The cases accounted for more than two-thirds of all incidents that were reviewed by Arizona officials, the Associated Press reported.
"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," Pima County Attorney Laura Conover said in a statement. "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."
The statement listed examples, including one person who said she thought her first ballot was stolen from her mailbox, prompting her to request a replacement ballot. Another person said he lost his first ballot and requested a second, and believed someone else may have found his first ballot and sent it in.
"To be clear, 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, and PCAO uncovered no conspiratorial acts in the incidents investigated," the statement said.
The statement also said one-third of the 151 were given a more intensive review, and that those ballots related to 23 registered Republicans, 15 registered Democrats, and 13 registered as unaffiliated/other.
Pima County's announcement came one day before Trump's rally in Florence, Arizona, where he repeated false or unsubstantiated claims about the 2020 election. Trump lost Arizona to President Joe Biden, a fact that has been confirmed by multiple audits, including one ordered by GOP lawmakers in the state.
source https://www.businessinsider.com/arizona-officials-rebut-election-fraud-claims-ahead-of-trump-rally-2022-1