The Fort Worth ‘Stop the Steal’ crowd is poking into our mailboxes again. Ignore them

The creepiness of the “Stop the Steal” crowd knows no bounds.

Now, they’re sticking their super-snooper noses in your mailbox again.

A so-called election-integrity activist living near TCU hand-delivered a letter to a nearby voter’s mailbox this week asking whether that voter actually cast an early ballot Friday at the Griffin Building in Polytechnic Heights, which is 7 miles away. As if nobody in the TCU neighborhood would ever consider voting east of Interstate 35W.

Now, understand, the entire “Stop the Steal” movement is an effort by some evangelical Christians to motivate voter turnout by raising suspicions and stoking resentment.

Yes, someone who lives near TCU voted in Poly. Voters can choose any of 50 sites all over the county.

The “Poly subcourthouse” is easy to get to for work commuters off U.S. 287. It’s usually not as crowded as the outlying locations.

A video recorded Sunday shows a woman delivering a letter to her mailbox. It read:

“I am with a group investigating the integrity of our local elections. ... There are an unusually high number of people that live in our neighborhood traveling to the Stop Six area to vote when there are many Early Voting sites between here and there.”

It listed the resident’s name, address, date and where she voted.

“I would very much appreciate your letting me know if this information is correct,” the letter went on.

It was signed by a TCU-area resident who has filed open-records requests with Tarrant County over past election ballots and records.

What would you do if somebody put a letter in your mailbox prying into exactly why you voted and where you voted?

The recipient warned friends by posting it on Twitter:

“I’m a little too annoyed over the fact that a PRIVATE CITIZEN rolled up to my house based on info she got from the voter history website and put this letter in my damn mailbox demanding I contact her to let her know it was indeed me who voted that day at that location and WHY.”

Look, here in Tarrant County we can vote anywhere we want. Thank goodness.

I’ve voted in Haltom City, River Oaks and at Southwestern seminary. There’s an online map showing which location has the shortest line.

That’s why early voting is popular. It’s convenient. (There isn’t even an early voting location in the TCU neighborhood. The nearest is the seminary.)

Where we vote is not really the business of anyone connected with Tarrant Election Integrity.

That’s the same Michael Flynn/Sidney Powell/My Pillow Guy “Stop the Steal” crowd that sent postcards after the May 2021 city election asking voters to submit their personal information to a website to “verify” their votes.

Lawyer Dan Bates of Tarrant Election Integrity, a public official as a local charter school board president, said he had not seen the letters but has represented the sender in requests to review past county election ballots and records.

Asking whether someone voted in a different part of town “is a good question to ask,” he said.

“You wouldn’t think somebody would go vote in Poly. ... Why would somebody go out of their way?”

Tarrant Election Integrity sprang up after the 2020 election with involvement by national evangelical Christian political figures.

It preaches — without a shred of current evidence — that all evangelical Christian voters in Tarrant County need to go vote, because the machines and the crooks and the Republican establishment and the Democrats are all rigging elections.

The suspicion is based in part on a long and lively local history of voter harvesting cases as reported in the Star-Telegram.

But harvesting hasn’t shown up again since a 2016-18 investigation and the passage of new election-fraud laws.

Harvesting violations involve mail voting, not early in-person voting.

If anything needs investigating, it’s the nosy tactics of Tarrant Election Integrity.

It is not known how many letters went out. The county elections office posted a copy of the letter on Twitter with a reminder that voters have the choice to vote at any location and that all voters’ IDs are checked by election clerks from both the Republican and Democratic parties.

“All we’re doing is asking questions,” Bates said.

I asked Bates a question.

Where did he vote?

“I vote downtown — it’s near my office,” he said.

I don’t know why voting in Polytechnic is suspicious but voting downtown is not.

Or maybe I do know.