Bud Kennedy: Remember that ‘Verify My Voting’ postcard? The authors question Fort Worth’s 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.