The closer we get to the start of voting in Arizona, the more the battle between candidates heats up.
While many voters have likely been inundated with political ads, texts and calls, others get physical mail asking voters to commit to a specific candidate.
Last week, Dennis Fleurant found one in his mailbox. “It looked like, you know, just a regular mailer,” said Fleurant. “Then, I noticed on the envelope it says ‘do not forward, personal record information.’”
He read his name and address on the front page of the contents inside, but later noticed a separate letter and card inside were addressed to someone else.
A card, made to look like an index card, worried him the most.
“It has the name, the address, phone number, his voter ID number on this card,” added Fleurant. “I’m looking at the card, and I’m going ‘this is not me’... I should’ve never got this; this is information I should not know.”
Fleurant, a veteran of ABC15 Arizona, worked in production at the news outlet for 34 years, retiring in 2013. Unsure what to do with the information he found and worried many voters may have received a similar mailer, he contacted ABC15.
“What can you do with the sensitive material that is on this personal card?” he asked. “If this happened to me, how many other President Trump mailers have ID cards of the wrong individual to the letters being sent?“
ABC15 reached out to local members of President Trump’s re-election campaign but were unable to get a hold of anyone to see if the campaign is aware of an error, or if other mailers had been reported to contain incorrect information.
The mailer was sent by the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, a political action committee funded by the Republican National Committee and WinRed, according to its website.
Sending physical mailers has been a common method used by political parties to garner support for a candidate running for office in an election. To do that, PAC gathers information from current voter records across the nation, to appeal to voters directly before many cast their ballot.
Still, Fleurant worried some voters may try to take advantage of someone else’s voter information.
“We have a president that is making a very big deal out of fraud out of possibly miss handling of mail,” he said. “The irony is just mind-boggling.”
According to Maricopa county election officials, a majority of the information found on the mailer is public information, and wouldn’t be enough to use to try and vote on behalf of someone else.
Voters need to present photo-ID or multiple proofs to the polls to vote early or on election day. Voters choosing to vote-by-mail have to sign the back of the envelope, and election officials must verify it before being counted.
