Former Republican state legislator Austin Smith has been indicted on 14 misdemeanor and felony counts for allegedly forging voter signatures on his petitions for reelection last year.
A former member of the state legislature’s far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus, Smith dropped his reelection bid last spring after he was accused of personally forging more than 100 petition signatures to get on the 2024 Republican primary ballot.
Around the same time, Smith resigned from his position as senior director at Turning Point Action, the political advocacy arm of Turning Point USA, a far-right organization based in Phoenix that aims to mobilize young conservatives. But according to Smith’s LinkedIn and X accounts, he was rehired in January as Turning Point Action’s strategic director. Smith made his X account private, blocking his biographical information — including his job title — on the morning of June 10, after the news of his indictment was made public.
A Maricopa County grand jury indicted Smith on June 2 on four felony counts, for presenting documents he knew were forged to the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, and 10 misdemeanor counts for personally forging the names of electors on his reelection petitions.
The felonies each come with a one- to two-year prison sentence; the misdemeanors come with a six-month imprisonment.
When the allegations of signature fraud became public in April 2024, Smith vehemently denied them, calling them “ludicrous” and accusing Democrats of creating a “coordinated attack” against him.
However, 100 of the signatures on his petition to get on last year’s Republican primary ballot, along with corresponding addresses, obviously look like they were all written by the same person. And some of the people whose names were on the petition told the court that they never signed it.
Smith took no accountability for the allegedly fraudulent signatures and said that he dropped out of the race because he didn’t want to spend tens of thousands defending himself in the civil elections challenge — as well as a possible criminal case for forgery.
Election denial
Ironically, Smith was a member of the Arizona House of Representatives Municipal Oversight and Elections Committee, where he decried unproven election fraud in Maricopa County, and has even made jokes accusing county officials of mail-in ballot signature fraud on social media.
“Signature verification in Maricopa County is a joke,” Smith wrote on Twitter in May 2023.
Smith was one of the many Arizona Republicans who falsely claimed without evidence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from President Donald Trump.
“What happened on November 3rd, 2020 in Maricopa County continues to be a national disgrace and embarrassment,” Smith wrote on his website. “Not only that, Austin believes it was criminal and will fight every day in the State Legislature to hold those responsible to account.”
Multiple audits, including a highly partisan review orchestrated by Arizona Senate Republicans, found no discrepancies in the election. Fraud allegations made in court in the days and weeks following the 2020 election were all rejected because there was no evidence backing up the claims.
Neither Turning Point USA Action nor Smith immediately responded to a request for comment.
This story was first published by Arizona Mirror, which is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
