A former Republican lawmaker who questioned the integrity of Arizona’s elections and served as a leader for the conservative group Turning Point Action is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday for using nominating petitions that contained forged signatures in a bid to qualify for a 2024 primary election.
Austin Smith, 30, pleaded guilty in mid-November to charges of attempted fraudulent schemes and practices, and illegal signing of election petitions. He had acknowledged trying to use petitions with forged signatures that he knew were false and forging a dead woman’s signature on a nominating petition.
Smith represented an Arizona House district in the Phoenix suburbs for one term before dropping his reelection bid in April 2024 when questions arose about signatures on his nominating petitions.
You’d think we as a society would have figured this out by now.
And yea, if I knew I was secretly corrupt AF and assumed everyone else was like me, then I’d probably want rules against it too.
Huh, gets me thinking, maybe we should treat extreme views like a mental illness. Then again, maybe not because it’s probably get abused quick like it did last time.