Overview
Shelby Robinson’s We the People AZ Alliance accused Maricopa County election workers of tampering with computer systems based on late-night footage, but an investigation by the Arizona Attorney General’s office found no wrongdoing.
The group has a record of making false election fraud claims, which have previously prompted harassment and threats against named election workers.
Robinson presented the group’s latest allegation of election tampering on Badlands Media, a QAnon-rooted network, and echoed the movement’s core themes.
Shelby Robinson’s False Election Tampering Allegation
On Oct. 13, 2026, Badlands Media’s CannCon and Ashe hosted Shelby (Busch) Robinson on their show, “Why We Vote,” to discuss her latest claims of election interference in Maricopa County, Arizona. Robinson’s group, We the People AZ Alliance, obtained non-public footage of Maricopa County election staff inserting flash drives into computers late at night on Oct. 7, and suggested that they sought to tamper with the county’s election infrastructure. “ So these guys come in after 9:00 — I believe it was about 9:08 p.m. He takes out his keys, he unlocks the port blocker, and he inserts a USB drive into this computer,” said Robinson. “ All of this equipment was tested on October 5th for [logic and accuracy] testing and should have been locked down and sealed. This occurred on October 7th.”
Shelby Robinson narrates We the People’s late-night footage of Maricopa County election workers on Badlands Media’s “Why We Vote,” October 13.
Before Robinson presented her case in detail on “Why We Vote,” her group had seemingly already determined that the workers were guilty of something related to the upcoming election. When We the People first posted the video on X on Oct. 9, they didn’t wait for answers or an investigation. They led with one word: “BUSTED,” and named one of the workers shown in the footage.
Robinson then contacted the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office about the footage, and the recorder then asked the FBI to investigate. The FBI referred the case to the state’s Attorney General’s office, which found no evidence of wrongdoing and concurred with the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors’ assessment that the employees carried out authorized work. We the People has a documented history of promoting dubious or debunked election fraud claims that leave named election workers to manage the fallout.
What is the We the People AZ Alliance PAC?
Shelby Robinson co-founded We the People AZ Alliance in late 2020 with her husband, Steve Robinson. Its most recent campaign finance records show that Robinson serves as the PAC’s treasurer, with her husband listed as chairman. Robinson concurrently serves as the vice chair of the Maricopa County Republican Committee. She chaired Arizona’s delegation to the 2024 Republican National Convention. The group has drawn funding from some of the election-denial movement’s most prolific backers, including MyPillow founder Mike Lindell and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne. Byrne’s group, The America Project, has been a top funder of We the People.Both she and her husband were appointed as deputy Senate liaisons to the 2020 Arizona Senate Election Audit. After that audit concluded, they continued reviewing 2020 ballot signatures through We the People. In a December 2022 court declaration, Robinson claimed that hundreds of thousands of voters’ signatures failed verification, which Maricopa County disputed in a detailed report earlier that same year. Robinson’s declaration also applied the organization’s calculated 2020 error rate to the 2022 election, projecting that more than 167,000 ballots would fail, without reviewing a single envelope from that election. That research fueled gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s failed challenge to her 2022 loss. The group’s efforts to uncover ballot signature verification flaws also targeted Celia Nabor, a former election official who oversaw Maricopa County’s mail-in ballot verification. While testifying before the Arizona Senate’s Election Committee, Robinson accused Nabor and other officials of pressuring workers to verify fraudulent signatures. Robinson also falsely claimed that Nabor resigned the day after We the People’s attorney followed up on their request to depose her. The first time the group’s attorney contacted the County to depose Nabor was Dec. 20 — nearly a month after Nabor had resigned to spend more time with an ill family member.
Two days after the committee hearing, an X account associated with Kari Lake’s gubernatorial campaign claimed that Nabor was “missing” and avoiding a deposition to investigate alleged misconduct. A day later, far-right conspiracy website Gateway Pundit published an article titled “WTH? Maricopa County Assistant Election Director Disappeared After Deposition Request Regarding Fraudulent Signature Verification.” The next day, a Gab user posted Nabor’s address, and somebody pounded on her door after 2 a.m. that night.
Robinson has also openly used violent rhetoric against Maricopa County election officials. During a March 2024 Republican congressional campaign event, she stated that she would “lynch” then-Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer. Robinson later called the remark a “joke.”
Robinson says she would “lynch” Maricopa County Record Stephen Richer at a congressional campaign event in 2024.
Shelby Robinson’s Connections to the QAnon Movement
Robinson presented this latest claim of election tampering on a platform whose audience is long-primed to accept conspiracy theories uncritically. Badlands Media emerged from a Telegram hub of QAnon influencers called We the Media and was founded by QAnon influencers Jon Herold and Kate Buckley. QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory, originating on 4chan in 2017, built on the baseless claim that Donald Trump was secretly battling a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles entrenched in government and elite institutions.
In 2024, Robinson appeared on another Badlands Media program called “The Tina Peters Show.” Peters has a similarly extensive track record of promoting claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. Peters, formerly a Mesa County, Colorado election clerk, was sentenced to nine years in prison for allowing an unauthorized individual to copy Dominion voting system data while hunting for 2020 fraud evidence. Colorado Governor Jared Polis pardoned Peters for these crimes in June 2026.
CannCon, whose real name is Brian Lupo, is also a QAnon influencer. He has cited Q drops and continually uses the QAnon-affiliated slogan “Where We Go 1 We Go All” (WWG1WGA). He also promotes antisemitic sentiments, and once described himself as “adjacent to the ‘ITS THE JEWS!’ camp probably 50-60% of the time” in an X post. Media Matters characterized his show, “Why We Vote” as a platform “dedicated to amplifying election conspiracy theories and misinformation.”
These appearances aren’t the extent of Robinson’s connections to the QAnon movement. Patrick Byrne, We the People’s primary funder, was a regular on the 2021 conference circuit that the Anti-Defamation League described as dominated by QAnon and similar ideologies, appearing alongside Michael Flynn, Mike Lindell and other movement figures.
During her “Why We Vote” appearance, Robinson also echoed QAnon-style themes and conspiracy theories, though she did not explicitly reference the Q conspiracy theory. “ We do deal with some other issues,” she said, describing We the People AZ Alliance’s mission. “But elections are so critical because border security, child-trafficking, all of that is fed by our corrupt elections. So if we don’t first fix our elections, we’re never gonna fix the rest of the problems.” Later in the episode, Robinson remarked that she and others should not continue to simply “trust the plan” with respect to election security, another QAnon slogan.
Shelby Robinson tells “Why We Vote” hosts that border security and child trafficking are “fed by our corrupt elections,” echoing QAnon’s core tenets.
Robinson is just one part of a broader milieu of conspiracy theorists who promulgate false claims that degrade Americans’ trust in our institutions. Voter fraud claims like the ones she promotes are now seemingly woven into the fabric of the U.S. political landscape with no signs of unraveling.
Founded in 2026, the Civil Defense Institute is a nonpartisan investigative research organization. We research people, organizations and networks whose conduct undermines civil society and Americans’ freedom to participate in public life. Our work examines extremist and conspiracy-driven campaigns, foreign influence, organized harassment and the institutions that enable them.