PHOENIX — When Denisha Mitchell was asked why she filled out forms to serve as an elector for Arizona, independent presidential candidate Cornel WestHer first reaction was, “What?!” Her second: What is a voter?
“I was shocked and surprised by everything. I didn’t even know what a voter was,” Mitchell told The Associated Press on Friday. “The crazy thing is it was all forged. None of it was my handwriting. It certainly wasn’t my signature. My email address was wrong, my address was wrong.”
Mitchell’s case is the latest example of questionable tactics being used to try to qualify West, a left-wing academic, for the ballot box in states across the U.S. It’s also one of the most egregious. It’s an effort that West himself apparently knows nothing about. His campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday night.
“If you provide information that is incorrect when you file it with a government agency in Arizona, you have committed a crime. It’s just not that complicated,” said Dennis K. Burke, a former U.S. Attorney in Arizona who also served as 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 to undermine the integrity of the votemany of which come from a group of conservative and Republican activists promoting West’s candidacy.
Republicans and their allies have worked to get West on the ballots in Arizona, Wisconsin, Virginia, North Carolina, Nebraska, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Maine.
They hope West will serve as a spoiler candidate and boost former President Donald Trump’s chances of winning in November by stealing liberal support from the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, in swing states that could be decided by just a few thousand votes.
While it’s unclear who was behind the move — and there’s no indication that the Trump campaign was directly involved — one thing is certain: It wasn’t West, who hasn’t actively campaigned and whose presidential committee, documents show, was nearly $17,000 in debt as of late June.
Since discovering she was registered to vote, Mitchell has signed an oath that will be filed with state authorities next week stating that she never agreed to serve as an elector and never signed her name to an application. In Arizona, all independent presidential campaigns must file an application showing that they have a slate of electors who will cast their Electoral College votes for a presidential candidate.
But hers isn’t the only unusual story among West’s electors.
One of them, Elizabeth Rothgeb, pleaded guilty to manslaughter after accepting a plea deal in the 1998 ax-killing death of her then-husband. She spent 10 years in prison and was released on Christmas Eve 2010, online records from the state prison system show.
Rothgeb, who could not be reached for comment, is a registered Republican, as are two other electors for West, voting records show. Two other electors listed in state records are not registered to vote at the addresses listed for them, records show.
Mitchell says she’s not sure who filled out the paperwork on her behalf.
She and her husband were both enthusiastic supporters of Bernie Sanders and were drawn to West’s progressive message earlier this year. They later took jobs collecting signatures for a ballot initiative to raise wages for tipped workers. They became embittered by West’s candidacy when they read that Republican operatives were working to get him on the ballot to play spoilsport.
“We weren’t for the Republican nastiness, so we stopped pushing him,” she said.
Her former employer, a signature-gathering contractor called Wells Marketing, a mysterious Missouri limited liability company, is leading the effort to get West on the Arizona ballot. The company did not respond to a message seeking comment left on a phone number listed there.
“I don’t know who did it. But because I worked for Wells (Marketing), they have my information,” Mitchell said.
The company has close ties to Mark Jacoby — her brother-in-law and former employer, according to social media posts — who was also listed on state documents as the employer of a signature gatherer who worked to get West on the state ballot.
Jacoby, a Republican operative from California with a long reputation for using deceptive tactics, was convicted of voter registration fraud in 2009, court records show.
In 2020, Jacoby worked to gather signatures to put rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, on the ballot. Ye’s quixotic presidential campaign was widely seen by Democrats as an attempt to dilute Joe Biden’s popularity among Black voters.
Jacoby’s company, Let the Voters Decide, came under investigation 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 coronavirus pandemic. No charges resulted from the investigation.
In 2008, he was accused of misleading voters into registering with the Republican Party in California by saying they were signing an initiative to toughen penalties for child molesters, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Jacoby didn’t answer the phone when he heard a number given to him and his voicemail box was full.
Similar unusual initiatives have been developed in other states as well.
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 get him on the ballot, he could take a percentage point off Biden.”
But Republican involvement in getting West and his Justice For All party on the ballot in North Carolina went much further.
In early June, revelations revealed that West spent just $2,400 this year to collect the signatures needed to qualify for the ballot in states across the US.
But then Justice For All submitted more than the needed 13,800 signatures. 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 doing work for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, helped West pull off the feat. The emails, previously reported by NBC News, show that employees affiliated with Blitz Canvassing were designated representatives to pick up and deliver petitions for West’s campaign.
Ballot access fraud is 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 his candidacy for the Arizona House of Representatives after being accused of forging signatures on his nominating petitions.
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Slodysko reported from Washington.