Turning Point Action senior director and Arizona state Rep. Austin Smith was named last week in a complaint alleging that he forged dozens of signatures, names, and addresses on his petitions to qualify for the state’s GOP primary ballot in July, quickly sparking a scandal that led the candidate to drop out of the race and resign from his position at TP Action just days later.
Yet, for all of right-wing media’s handwringing about voter fraud in recent election cycles, a Media Matters analysis found no mentions of those allegations between April 15-23 on Fox News, One America News, and Newsmax — conservative cable outlets that have repeatedly peddled and fixated on debunked instances of supposed voter fraud.
An Arizona state representative and Turning Point Action official has been accused of forging signatures on a ballot qualification petition
According to an April 15 complaint filed by one of Smith’s constituents in state Superior Court, the first-term lawmaker “personally circulated multiple petition sheets bearing what appear to be forged voter signatures” in handwriting that bore a “striking resemblance” to his own. Additionally, several purported signers provided declarations claiming that they never signed Smith’s petitions.
In a statement posted on X (formerly Twitter) on April 18, Smith refuted the allegations and announced that he would withdraw his candidacy to avoid the legal fees required to defend himself in court. (That same day, Smith resigned from his position at Turning Point Action.) He also claimed that the complaint was part of a “coordinated attack” and a “well-organized effort.”
But as Arizona Republic columnist Laurie Roberts noted, “If, in fact, this was some Democratic conspiracy to chase an innocent man from the Legislature, it’s curious that Smith wouldn’t defend himself. More curious still is the fact that not a single Republican legislator has called for his resignation in light of his refusal to answer allegations of election fraud.”
Smith repeatedly claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump, and on the eve of the January 6, 2021, insurrection — in a now-deleted post on X — Smith reportedly urged his followers to not “get comfortable” and “fight like hell.”
In a recent post, Smith promoted a colleague running against Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican official scorned by pro-Trump figures for pushing back on false election fraud narratives in his county.
The same right-wing media outlets who bellyache about supposed "voter fraud" are silent that a TPUSA-affiliated Turning Point Action senior director and Arizona State Rep. Austin Smith (R) forged signatures to get on the ballot.
now that it's been five months, can I point out something really funny that I don't think anybody noticed?
so you may remember that round 2 was notorious for the voter fraud that happened in blackbonnet vs stucky. some people (on both sides!) found the whole thing hilarious; some people (again, on both sides!) got really, really unreasonably angry.
the graph looked like this. now, that's a very sudden and noticeable spike there at the end; this was definitely a coordinated effort and it was definitely to some degree fraud. there's screenshots of a job listing on sproutgigs to prove it.
but look at the rest of the graph. that's fairly natural-looking— no enormous spikes, no stopping and starting. there's bumps, of course, because sometimes you get reblogged by someone with lots of followers, and there's upsets, but there aren't cliffs. for the most part, except for that sudden bend at the end, this is pretty normal voter behavior.
people joked about the fraud in this poll for weeks afterwards. "hey, where's the award for most voter fraud?" people said.
well.
the award for most voter fraud does not go to stucky vs blackbonnet. it goes to this absolute fucking nonsense:
like, look at that. look at those long stretches where almost nobody was voting crimeboys. look at the sudden jumps, and look at how suddenly they end. in the earlier sections you can see the little pauses where whoever was frauding took a break to rest their wrists and get a snack.
I don't know what I think the takeaway here is. you could say this is a story about how accusations of voter fraud don't track voter fraud, they track controversy. you could say this is a story about how if you don't have a graph right in front of you, it is significantly harder to identify voter fraud than you think it is. both of those are even true.
but personally, I like to look at it as a post about how if you really try, you can chart human passion. and I think that's beautiful.
Kim Taylor, who was born in Vietnam, approached members of the Sioux City Vietnamese community and offered to help them vote. Some of these people had limited ability to read and understand English.
Taylor would visit the homes of these Vietnamese community members and bring voter registration forms and absentee ballot forms and, in some cases, fill them out on their behalf.
According to the Sioux City Journal, Taylor also used people’s ballots to cast votes for Donald Trump during the 2020 presidential election. The Journal reports that one of the people Taylor forged a ballot for was a registered Democrat and he testified that he “had no intention of voting for Donald Trump in that election.”
Biden floods our country with ILLEGALS and now wants to get rid of Voter ID. Like many other things we can’t stop voter fraud if we don't confirm identity. There is nothing racist about this issue! US citizens have ID's & required for many things much less important than voting.