Her name was on a signature petition to be a Cornel West elector. Her question: What is an elector?

PHOENIX (AP) – When Denisha Mitchell was asked why she filled out paperwork to serve as a voter in Arizona for independent presidential candidate Cornel Westher first response was “What?!” Her second: What is a voter?

“I was shocked and surprised by all of this. I didn’t even know what a voter was,” Mitchell told The Associated Press on Friday. “The crazy thing is that it was all faked. Nothing was my handwriting. It was definitely not my signature. My email was wrong, my address was wrong.”

Mitchell’s case is the latest example of dubious tactics being used in the effort to qualify West, a left-leaning academic, to vote in US states. It is also among the most egregious. It’s an endeavor West himself apparently knows nothing about. His campaign did not immediately return calls for comment Friday night.

“If you provide information that is false when filing with an Arizona government entity, you have committed a crime. It’s just not that complicated,” said Dennis K. Burke, a former U.S. attorney in Arizona who was also a chief deputy in the state attorney general’s office.

But as the presidential election enters a critical three-month period, efforts are underway across the country undermines the integrity of the ballotmany of them coming from a collection of conservative activists and Republican-aligned operatives pushing West’s candidacy.

Republicans and their allies pushed for West to follow in Arizona, Wisconsin, Virginia, North Carolina, Nebraska, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Maine.

Their hope is that West will serve as a spoiler candidate, boosting former President Donald Trump’s chance to win in November by chipping away at liberal support from Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in states that could be decided by just a few thousand votes.

While it’s unclear who’s behind the effort — and there’s no indication the Trump campaign is directly involved — one thing is certain: It’s not West, who has not actively campaigned and whose presidential committee, records show, was of almost 17,000 dollars. debt at the end of June.

Since discovering she was registered to become a voter, Mitchell has signed an affidavit to be filed with state authorities next week stating that she has never agreed to serve as a voter and has never signed her name to – a file. In Arizona, all independent presidential campaigns are required to file filings showing they have a list of electors who will cast their electoral college ballot for a presidential candidate.

But her story is not the only unusual one among the list of voters for the West.

One of them, Elizabeth Rothgeb, pleaded guilty to manslaughter after taking a plea deal stemming from the ax killing of her then-husband in 1998. She spent 10 years in prison and was released on Christmas Eve 2010, according to online records from the state prison system.

Rothgeb, who could not be reached for comment, is a registered Republican, as are two other West voters, voting records show. Two additional voters listed in state records are not registered to vote at the addresses provided for them, records show.

As for Mitchell, she says she’s not sure who filled out the paperwork on her behalf.

She and her husband were both enthusiastic Bernie Sanders supporters and were drawn to West’s progressive message earlier this year. They later took jobs collecting petition signatures to get an initiative on the ballot to raise tipped workers’ wages. They hardened West’s candidacy when they read that Republican-aligned operatives were working to get him on the ballot to play spoiler.

“We weren’t for the Republican filth, so we stopped pushing it,” she said.

Her former employer, a signature-gathering contractor called Wells Marketing, a mysterious limited liability company in Missouri, is leading the effort to get West on the ballot in Arizona. The company did not respond to a message seeking comment at a phone number listed for it.

“I don’t know who did it. But because I worked for Wells (Marketing), they have my information,” Mitchell said.

The company is closely affiliated with Mark Jacoby — her brother-in-law and former employer, according to social media posts — who was also named in state documents as the employer of a signature gatherer working to get West on the ballot in state.

Jacoby is a California Republican operative with a longstanding reputation for using deceptive tactics. He was convicted in 2009 of voter registration fraud, court records show.

In 2020, Jacoby worked to collect signatures to place rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, on the ballot. Ye’s quixotic presidential campaign was widely seen by Democrats as an effort to dilute Joe Biden’s popularity among black voters.

Jacoby’s firm, Let the Voters Decide, was investigated for using questionable signature-gathering tactics during a 2020 petition drive in Michigan that sought to roll back some of Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s emergency powers during the pandemic. coronavirus. No charges came from the investigation.

He was accused in 2008 of tricking voters into registering with the California Republican Party by telling them he was signing an initiative to toughen penalties for child abusers, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Jacoby did not answer a call from a number listed for him and his voicemail was full.

Similar unusual efforts have been underway in other states.

In April, The Washington Post reported that pro-Trump activist Scott Presler was collecting signatures for West outside a Trump rally in North Carolina. In a video posted online, Presler described West, an academic, as a “far-left Marxist” who “if we put him on the ballot, he could take a percentage point away” from Biden.

But Republican involvement in getting West and his Justice for All party on the North Carolina ballot ran much deeper.

As of early June, the disclosures show, West has spent just $2,400 this year to gather the signatures needed to qualify for the U.S. state ballot.

But then Justice For All submitted well over the roughly 13,800 signatures needed. State government emails obtained by The Associated Press show that current and former employees of Blitz Canvassing, a Republican firm that made millions of dollars working for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, helped West pull it off. The emails, previously reported by NBC News, show that employees affiliated with Blitz Canvassing were the designated representatives to pick up and mail the petitions for the West campaign.

Ballot access provisions are nothing new in Arizona, where elections are often decided by fractions of a percentage point.

This year, a leader of the conservative group Turning Point Action resigned from the organization and dropped out of his bid for re-election to the Arizona House of Representatives after being accused of forging signatures on his nominating petitions.

___

Slodysko reported from Washington.