When Denisha Mitchell was asked why she filled out paperwork to serve as an Arizona elector for the independent presidential candidate Cornel West, her first response was “What?!” Her second: What’s an elector?

“I was shocked and surprised by it all. I didn’t even know what an elector was,” Mitchell told The Associated Press on Friday. “The crazy thing is it was all forged. None of it 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 used in an effort to qualify West, a left-wing academic, for the ballot in states across the U.S. It’s also among the more egregious. It’s an effort that West himself apparently knows nothing about. His campaign did not immediately respond for comment Friday evening.

But as the presidential election enters a critical three-month period, there are efforts around the country to subvert the integrity of the ballot, many of them coming from a collection of conservative activists and Republican-aligned operatives pushing West’s candidacy.

    • RavenFellBlade@startrek.website
      232·
      3 months ago

      The right is funding him in an effort to split the vote on the left in an effort to boost Trump. They’re especially desperate to split the Democrat and Independent votes since it’s become very obvious that RFK Jr has been fragmenting the voter base on the right. The libertarian votes that Trump just assumed would be his have a very good chance of going to Master Brain Worm.

    • jayk@lemmy.caEnglish
      191·
      3 months ago

      Yes, because if he WASN’T left wing, the right wouldn’t be funding him

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    326·
    3 months ago

    It’s an effort that West himself apparently knows nothing about. His campaign did not immediately respond for comment Friday evening.

    You’d think that, even if he knows nothing about it, his campaign would immediately respond to the Associated Press asking about it.

    Seems more like an “I don’t want to know about it” situation.

        • BigPotato@lemmy.world
          3·
          3 months ago

          Yeah, but you’d need to think in your campaign room “What if someone asks why we’re certifying fake electors?” which, admittedly, in a sane world seems like an insane thing to worry about.

          We’re not in a sane world but “Well, we don’t have a comment at this time but we’re looking into the matter.” could be construed as “didn’t immediately respond to our question.”

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
            1·
            3 months ago

            Generally when someone gives a response but an ambiguous one like that, it is reported as something like, “when contacted, we were told they did not have a comment at this time, but were looking into the matter.”

            Because in that case, claiming they did not respond would be a lie. They did respond, they just didn’t give an answer. There’s a difference.

    • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
      136·
      3 months ago

      That’s code for “we sent an email right before publishing and didn’t instantly get a reply”.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
        203·
        3 months ago

        Not in my experience working in TV journalism. And I doubt the AP is less professional than the local TV shitshows I worked for.

        • jonne@infosec.pub
          51·
          3 months ago

          They say ‘Friday evening’, presumably this Friday evening, after all businesses are closed. I’m assuming West hired some third party to get all this done, and there’s no way they’re going to get to the bottom of this over the weekend.

          The West campaign has been a bit of a shitshow from the start, and while he’s a brilliant academic, he’s not an experienced politician and he hasn’t exactly hired the best campaign managers (also partly because you get blacklisted by the big parties if you ever work on a third party campaign).

    • girlfreddy@lemmy.caOP
      152·
      3 months ago

      Or it could be his campaign wanted to look into it before giving a quote.

      Not everything is a conspiracy.

        • girlfreddy@lemmy.caOP
          81·
          3 months ago

          True. It just seemed to me that wanting a quote right away wouldn’t give the campaign time to research it themselves. Which is fair, especially in light of what the AP found.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
            52·
            3 months ago

            All I can say is that, in my experience, they give these places a good 4-6 hours at minimum to respond. In general it was a good 12.

            For one thing, it takes time for these articles to pass from writer to editor to “print.” Less time now that it’s all digital, but we’re not talking 10 minutes.