PHOENIX — An Arizona company led by the Mesa Vice Mayor is under scrutiny for problematic voter registration forms.
In a press conference Monday afternoon, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer detailed issues with voter registration forms, including an Arizona company that's been "in the news" in Pennsylvania.
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'Tried to register Mickey Mouse, Jerry Seinfeld, Donald Duck, among others'
Richer said that some issues came up with a batch of 90,000 voter registration forms turned in on October 7, the deadline to register to vote in Maricopa County.
"We had people with entire trash bags full of voter registration forms in our lobby," Richer detailed.
Of the big batch, Richer said tens of thousands of forms were problematic. Some problems included forms that were damaged, torn, hard to read, or just flat-out wrong.
"40,000 approximately of those voter registration forms were, I think, the charitable word would be to say they were needing attention," Richer said. "Voter registration forms that tried to register Mickey Mouse, Jerry Seinfeld, Donald Duck, among others."
Richer said a group that played a "significant" role in that big drop-off was Arizona-based FieldCorps. Arizona business records indicate that Mesa Vice Mayor Francisco Heredia runs FieldCorps.
"This is a group that we have alerted in the past that we have been not wholly satisfied with the voter registration forms that have been submitted," Richer said.
Of the 40,000 problematic forms dropped off in Maricopa County on the registration deadline, Richer couldn’t confirm how many came from FieldCorps.
But it isn’t the only issue with the company this year.
'Applications involve forged signatures, often with incorrect or incomplete identifying information'
In Monroe County, Pennsylvania, the district attorney shared in a statement last week on social media that 21 voter registration forms linked back to FieldCorps were referred to the District Attorney’s Office by the Board of Elections. The DA said they determined 16 of those Field Corps forms were "fraudulent," writing "the specific fraudulent character of these applications involve forged signatures, often with incorrect or incomplete identifying information.”
The Monroe County District Attorney's Office did not return 12News' call for comment.
Last year, the Arizona Attorney General’s Office said that two dozen forms from FieldCorps in Navajo and Mohave Counties were sent to the AG’s Office for investigation. That case was referred to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office and remains open. The AG said all those forms were rejected and none of those people were registered to vote.
Neither Heredia nor his staff responded to 12News' requests for an interview. He did not attend Mesa's City Council meeting on Monday night.
Richer said these issues with FieldCorps are things they’ve discussed with the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office and the Arizona Attorney General’s Office.
A spokesperson for the Arizona Attorney General's Office said as of now, they haven’t gotten any official complaints about FieldCorps or any others related to voter registration forms this year.
"And we have admonished them to please, please, please submit better voter registration forms to please do more quality control," Richer said.
These inaccuracies or incomplete forms are taxing on county recorder offices.
Richer said by law, they have to try and contact people on these bad forms to see if they can provide information to complete the form and get registered to vote.
Those are the safeguards in place that seemed to work here and prevent bad registrations from going through.
"I will tell you that this has been a thorn in the side of county recorders throughout Arizona for many years but has picked up in recent years," Richer said.