In Apache County, the recorder's office has just three people to process voter registration forms. Some days, dozens will be dropped off by a given group, and staff members estimate that around 3 out of every 10 can't immediately be processed because they are incomplete or inaccurate.

Petty said her office in Maricopa County often sees forms with incorrect information such as a birthdate that is off a few digits. Sometimes a form will come in for someone they believe is already registered, and it takes work to make sure it is the same person.

And then there are the forms that come in with names like "Mickey Mouse" or "Donald Duck."

Petty and other election officials suspect that some circulators may be responsible for these because they get paid for each form they turn in.

State Sen. Ken Bennett, a Republican and former secretary of state, introduced a bill this year that would have banned voter registration groups from paying employees for each form they turn in, a practice he claims incentivizes fraud.

The bill was blocked in committee in the House, but he hopes to try again next year.

Voting rights groups generally object to new restrictions on groups that register voters, especially given that several states have already limited how such groups do their work, with sometimes harsh penalties for organizations that break the rules.

Since 2021, at least six states have enacted laws restricting third-party voter registration assistance, according to the Voting Rights Lab.

A Florida law enacted in 2023, for example, prohibited noncitizens from helping with nonpartisan voter registration drives and imposed a $50,000 fine on organizations that violate the law. A federal judge recently blocked portions of that law, after the League of Women Voters, Poder Latinx, and other organizations filed a lawsuit.

Prefilled mailers cause problems

In Yavapai County, Recorder Michelle Burchill said the biggest issue for her team this year has been the use of an old version of an official form that voters use to be placed on the active early-voting list.

The older form has former Secretary of State Katie Hobbs' seal on it. Hobbs is now the governor.

Some voters have been getting a copy of the form in the mail, with their name, address, and birthdate prefilled. The problem is, half of the time, the prefilled birthdate is wrong.

Burchill said she isn't sure who is sending out the form. Similar forms have long been distributed by political parties or advocacy groups that use commercially available information to develop mailing lists of potential voters.

But from speaking to voters, her staff has come to believe that some of them are returning the prefilled forms because they mistakenly believe they are required to.

Burchill said she strongly believes that no one should be permitted to send out prefilled forms. "These documents, often created with outdated voter information, inadvertently contribute to voter distrust and hinder the electoral process's integrity," Burchill said.

Tennessee enacted a law this year that bans organizations from prefilling voter information on mailers.

State Sen. John Kavanagh, a Republican, proposed a bill in 2023 at the request of Maricopa County Recorder's Office that would require a disclosure saying any mailing sent out from third-party registration groups isn't a government mailer.

In testimony to lawmakers, Aaron Flannery, government liaison for the recorder's office, said that during a recent election cycle, the county had received about 3,300 forms from voters spurred by third-party mailers, and about 82% of those people were already registered, and needed no update to their records.

Flannery said the mailers led to phone calls from confused or angry residents. "My husband has been dead for 11 years," Flannery quoted one caller as saying. "Why are you trying to register him again?"

State Rep. Cesar Aguilar, a Democrat, said in a recent interview that his dad, who is a permanent U.S. resident but not a citizen, once received what he believed to be an official mailer saying he was eligible to register to vote, when he is not.

Aguilar said he isn't sure that the Republican proposals would fix the problem. But he said he thinks there might be room for the Legislature to come together on a solution in future years.