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Tucson man faces felony charges for voting twice in 2016 election
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Tucson man faces felony charges for voting twice in 2016 election

A Tucson man is facing charges for illegally casting two ballots in the 2016 election — once in Pima County and once in Nevada. Randy Allen Jumper, a longtime Republican who cast his last ballot as an independent, will be arraigned next month.

According to the grand jury indictment released Thursday, Jumper voted in the November 8, 2016 election both here and in Washoe County, Nevada.

Online records show Jumper, age 61, has maintained addresses in both the Tucson area and in that Nevada county, in Incline Village, on Lake Tahoe.

Jumper was a registered Republican in Pima County from 1982 to 2014, local election officials said. He changed to "party not designated" or a so-called independent voter that January.

Jumper was a regular voter; he cast a ballot in "virtually every primary and general going back to the '80s," Deputy Pima County Recorder Chris Roads told TucsonSentinel.com on Thursday.

The last ballot he cast here was in 2016; he was put on inactive status in 2018 after election mailings were returned without a forwarding address.

In Nevada, Jumper is registered as a nonpartisan voter. He registered there in July 2016, online records show.

Cases like this "pop up because of our cross-state matching" program that compares voter files between the states, County Recorder F. Ann Rodriguez said Thursday. Rodriguez said her office informed Arizona state authorities of the case last year.

Calls to Jumper were not immediately returned.

He faces two counts of illegal voting and one count of perjury in Pima County Superior Court, each a class 5 felony, after a grand jury handed down an indictment on July 22. Jumper is alleged to have violated A.R.S. §16-1016(1), 16-1016(2), 16-101, 16-1021, 13-701, 13-702, 13-801, 13-2702(A)(2), and 13-2701.

The perjury charge stems from Jumper having made a declaration under penalty of perjury that he had not voted in "any other county or state" while signing the affidavit on the envelope of an early-voting ballot, when he had already voted in Nevada, authorities said.

The case was investigated by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office after Jumper's conduct was referred for review by the Arizona Secretary of State's Office in 2018, authorities said.

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