Last fall, before the November 8, 2022, election, the Lions of Liberty and the Yavapai County Preparedness Team announced plans to have volunteers conduct ballot drop box “monitoring” in Yavapai County and take pictures of voters and their license plates when they dropped off more than one ballot.
They stated this was a necessary measure to prevent election fraud by “ballot mules,” who, according to discredited conspiracy theories, stuffed ballot drop boxes in Arizona with thousands of illegitimate ballots during the 2020 election. In fact, Arizona law explicitly allows certain eligible relatives and members of the voter’s household to return absentee ballots on their behalf.
The defendants, who possessed ties to the Oath Keepers, also said volunteers could be armed when conducting these activities. The Oath Keepers are a far-right group who helped storm the Capitol during the January 6 Insurrection.
Clean Elections USA, headed by co-defendant Melody Jennings, also announced plans to recruit volunteers to monitor ballot drop boxes and photograph voters dropping off multiple ballots, as well as their license plates.
In several posts on Truth Social leading up to the election, defendants stated these operations were needed to protect elections from ballot “mules” allegedly stuffing ballot drop boxes in Maricopa County. Clean Elections USA volunteers began photographing and filming voters using ballot drop boxes, and in some cases, posted photos of voters and their license plates on Truth Social, implying they were ““mules.” Several of these volunteers were armed and wore body armor.
With representation by the Protect Democracy Project, the League of Women Voters of Arizona, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court, naming as defendants the Lions of Liberty, LLC, the Yavapai County Preparedness Team, Clean Election USA, and several individual plaintiffs, and asserting violations of the
Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the
Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. The League requested a temporary restraining order banning the defendants from conducting any ballot drop box surveillance until the election was over and an award of damages to compensate for the expenses it incurred responding to the planned voter intimidation.
On October 31, 2022, the court held an initial hearing. Defendants Lions of Liberty and Yavapai Preparedness Team, agreed to stop all ballot drop box surveillance and were dismissed from the case, leaving Clean Elections USA and Melody Jennings as the remaining defendants.
On November 1, 2022, after hearing testimony from LWV Arizona and several voters who were intimidated or deterred from voting via ballot drop box due to defendants’ activities, the court issued the requested temporary restraining order. It banned volunteers monitoring drop boxes from coming within 75 feet of a ballot drop box or carrying firearms or wearing body armor within 250 feet of a ballot drop box, among other requirements. The court also
ordered Clean Elections USA to post on its web site the full text of the Arizona statute allowing voters to return multiple absentee ballots for eligible persons.