Somebody posing as Beto O’Rourke’s campaign sent texts proposing voter fraud

“Would you like to commit crimes?” the text message might as well have asked.

In the all-consuming Texas Senate race, Democrat Beto O’Rourke’s campaign has been obligated to deny that its staffers sent messages to Texans asking if they would help to transport undocumented immigrants to polling places so they could vote. To commit voter fraud, in other words.

The New York Times outlined the strange story with the O’Rourke campaign’s denials:

Mr. O’Rourke’s campaign confirmed that the messages were authentic, but a spokesman said they came from an “impostor.”

“That was not an approved message by the campaign,” said Chris Evans, a spokesman for Mr. O’Rourke. Mr. Evans added that the campaign was looking into how the unauthorized message was sent. The person who sent the text was “not a Beto volunteer,” Mr. Evans said.

Screenshots of the messages circulated on Twitter before the Times wrote up the story.

O’Rourke’s campaign has aggressively used text messaging to reach voters, the Times’s Kevin Roose noted. But what is described in these fraudulent messages — helping nonvoters vote — would obviously be a violation of Texas election laws (or those of any other state). Deliberate and unambiguous voter fraud.

The Times reported that the identity of the person or people sending the messages posing as O’Rourke’s campaign has not been discovered. Obviously, some Democrats have cast suspicious glances toward Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and the Texas GOP.

It is another bizarre turn in one of 2018’s most heavily covered Senate campaigns. O’Rourke is polling within a few points of Cruz on average, and the pages and websites of every major political publication in the country have been overflowing with stories about the young (and handsome) Democratic candidate.

Cruz and Texas Republicans, perhaps caught off guard by such a strong challenge in what was thought to still be a safely red state, have turned to increasingly odd tactics to counter the O’Rourke momentum.

The Cruz campaign started by mocking the white Beto for taking a more Latinized version of his real first name, Robert (O’Rourke says he’s had the nickname since he was a baby). The Texas GOP then sent out a string of tweets mocking O’Rourke’s past as a rock musician and a once-convicted drunk driver.

Now somebody out there has decided to pose as O’Rourke staffers to propose perpetrating blatant voter fraud. Even the stupid political hackery is bigger in Texas.

We're here to shed some clarity

One of our core beliefs here at Vox is that everyone needs and deserves access to the information that helps them understand the world, regardless of whether they can pay for a subscription. With the 2024 election on the horizon, more people are turning to us for clear and balanced explanations of the issues and policies at stake. We’re so grateful that we’re on track to hit 85,000 contributions to the Vox Contributions program before the end of the year, which in turn helps us keep this work free. We need to add 2,500 contributions this month to hit that goal. Will you make a contribution today to help us hit this goal and support our policy coverage? Any amount helps.

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via