Now the ‘Stop the Steal’ crowd is complaining about the Fort Worth city election

Now we know more about who was behind those sneaky postcards asking Fort Worth voters to log into a website and “verify” our votes.

Unable to sell fake “Stop the Steal” political silliness to much of America, allies of the Michael Flynn-Sidney Powell stolen-election circus here now want to investigate Tarrant County and Fort Worth elections.

Just because a record 87,000 people voted June 5 in a $3 million Fort Worth mayor’s race that was intensely partisan and personal, a handful of activists are claiming the numbers were suspiciously high and the results need to be reviewed.

“We’re seeing numbers and data that don’t make sense,” said Jay Meadows, a Parker County rancher and Republican campaign donor.

In a July 12 interview on the Newsmax network, he defended the group’s murky, unsigned “verify my voting” mailers and website that asked gullible recipients to send in their personal information to check whether they voted, but then often didn’t give accurate results.

Meadows led off a 90-minute public presentation on “election integrity” Thursday to a crowd of about 120 people at a recreation center in North Richland Hills, sponsored by nearby LIFEchurch.

It featured Seth Keshel of Parker County, a numbers geek who has worked with the Flynn-Powell team on its fantasy courtroom claims supporting President Donald Trump’s campaign.

(For weeks, Powell hammered away with false claims about crooked voting in Tarrant County, even though the county remained solidly Republican countywide except for Trump.)

Turns out the “verify” postcards were sent by Meadows and donors including two Fort Worth lawyers, Bill Fearer and Dan Bates, a school board trustee with the public Texas Center for Arts + Academics charter schools. Another Fort Worth man, Buff Kizer, invited guests to the presentation.

“This is not a QAnon gathering,” Keshel began his talk.

But it sounded like one.

On Twitter weeks ago, Keshel had promised a report on Tarrant County elections to “make your head swim.”

But he only delivered a confusing blur of national reports meant more to stir resentment about the 2020 national election than to give answers.

Then Fearer questioned the Fort Worth election, in particular the record 14,000-plus votes in southwest Fort Worth that turned incumbent council member Jungus Jordan out of office in favor of educator Jared Williams.

(That district always leads the city in voting, and both political parties worked it heavily.)

Fearer also found it suspicious that Sheriff Bill Waybourn, a Dalworthington Gardens Republican, only won re-election by 5 points in the November 2020 election over challenger Vance Keyes, a Fort Worth Democrat.

(That wasn’t odd at all. That was a wider margin than Sen. John Cornyn won by in Tarrant County.)

Also, Fearer raised a question about the thousands of new voters who registered since the November election, some arriving the same day.

“There’s no conclusion drawn,” Fearer said. “Just suspicion.”

Sure.

The event ended with an evangelical guest message from Pastor Rafael Cruz of Carrollton, the father of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. But the pastor didn’t discuss the program. He only preached about the need for Christians to get out and vote.

Later, Meadows said he is considering asking a district judge to order a city election audit.

“That’s probably where things will be going,” he said.

He said he views Flynn and Powell as “people who care about this country.”

Bates, the other lawyer, said the group wants an “inspection of the election process.”

The new Tarrant County Democratic Party Chair, Allison Campolo of Euless, sees no need.

“While I appreciate this group’s interest in ensuring our elections are secure,” she wrote in a message, reviews so far show “we participated in an extremely secure election process.”

The city elections are overseen by both Republican and Democratic election judges and workers.

“ ... It is a waste of taxpayer money to try to find fraud where there is no evidence of it,” Campolo wrote.

“I have the utmost faith in our Tarrant County Elections Board, as well as the election judges and officials of both parties .... I believe this is also true for our 2021 Fort Worth city council elections.”

I’m not sure what the “verify” crowd is thinking.

But spreading poison does not help their side win.