An upcoming Turning Point USA rally in Phoenix with President Donald Trump appears to be part of a larger effort by the conservative organization to collect voter data ahead of the 2026 election cycle.
TPUSA recently announced it will host the “Build the Red Wall” event at Dream City Church in Phoenix on April 17. Trump will appear with Erika Kirk, the widow of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, and Congressman Andy Biggs, who is running for governor.
Entrance to the event will be available on a first come, first serve basis, but all attendees must check their voter registration status to be eligible to enter.
They can do that on the event’s landing page using a form that asks for personal information like name, address, birth date and phone number along with other questions — like whether a person has voted before and how they plan to vote this year.
Vote.Online organization
The registration form for the Trump event was created by Vote.Online, a relatively new nonprofit organization “with a mission to register voters, provide simple and straightforward online voting information, and ensure that Americans nationwide vote,” according to its website.
On the surface, it is unclear who operates Vote.Online. Its website includes no information about who runs it or affiliation with outside groups that could potentially benefit from the data it collects.
But buried in the website’s privacy policy, Vote.Online lists its address as an office building in Phoenix that also happens to house Turning Point USA’s headquarters.
And, according to her Linkedin profile, Vote.Online’s CEO is Amy Smith, a longtime Turning Point employee.
Smith is also married to former state lawmaker Austin Smith, who resigned from the Arizona House of Representatives after he was caught forging signatures on petitions for his re-election campaign. He pleaded guilty in November to reduced charges of attempted fraud and illegal signing of election petitions.
At the time the allegations surfaced in 2024, Smith was a senior director with Turning Point Action, TPUSA’s political arm. He resigned from that job but appears to have returned to the organization in 2025.
“The fact that they’re still linked in to Austin Smith shows that their public disavowing of him is fake,” said Tyler Montague, a Republican strategist in Arizona and frequent Turning Point critic. “It’s not sincere. They don’t give a rip about his fraud and cheating.”
A spokesman for Turning Point USA and Turning Point Action did not respond to requests for comment.
Whose data is it anyway?
The Vote.Online homepage features a map of the United States that links to voter registration guides and other information for each state.
Its website also includes widgets other organizations can embed on their pages, like the one featured on the Trump event registration page.
There are tools to help people register to vote, get election reminders and check registration status. There’s a separate tool asking people under 18 to pledge to register to vote when they are eligible.
Montague said the type of data included on those forms can be valuable to political campaigns.
“If you're talking about election type activity, they want to know who their high propensity respondents are to their messages so that they can use that to target those voters,” Montague said. “They do it for fundraising purposes. They're really interested, all organizations are interested in who believes in their cause enough to donate money.”
Organizations across the political spectrum invest in that kind of data to identify people to target with their get-out-the vote efforts to boost turnout for their preferred candidates.
Montague said some information, like a person’s party affiliation and how often they vote, can be obtained through public records.
“Just because you can buy who the voters are and how they're registered and how often they vote, doesn't mean you know who they vote for or what issues animate them the most,” he said. “And so it gets more powerful when you can link up that kind of data with this sort of data, right? it just becomes another data point in the profile that they're building.”
According to the IRS, Vote.Online is a recognized 501(c)3 nonprofit that was registered by a South Carolina-based law firm specializing in non-profit organizations.
Those types of nonprofit organizations are barred from participating in political activity, and Vote.Online’s privacy policy specifies it will not share gathered information with political campaigns, political parties, marketing companies, data brokers or for commercial advertising.
But there is nothing stopping Vote.Online from sharing the voter data it gathers with Turning Point USA or Turning Point Action, which is a different kind of nonprofit organization known as a 501(c)4 that can engage in some political activity.
“I don’t believe we’re looking at some sort of campaign finance violation or any other sort of legal hurdle,” said Jim Barton, an Arizona election attorney.
Barton said the organizations should document any transfers of voter data as part of required financial reporting.
“It is a thing of value, that voter contact information, and so you would need to track it appropriately,” he said.
The red wall
The data gathering effort appears to be part of Turning Point’s mission to “Build the Red Wall” — or boost Republican registration and turnout — in battleground states like Arizona and Nevada.
The organization asks other groups to embed its tools on their websites and at least one, the High School Conservatives of America, features a Vote.Online form on its homepage.
But, if Vote.Online is part of a Republican voter engagement effort, you wouldn’t know it by looking at the website.
In the past, Turning Point has tried to boost its voter data collection machine using branded apps and tools bearing the organization’s name and trademark logo.
Vote.Online carries none of those markers. The website is colored in purple, black and green and offers no description linking it to TPUSA, Turning Point Action or Republican politics.
Similarly, Vote.Online’s messaging on social media offers mostly neutral updates on upcoming elections as well as election-related news on topics like the national redistricting fight and the SAVE Act.
But Vote.Online has concrete connections to TPUSA and Turning Point Action, which has endorsed Biggs and dozens of other candidates running in Arizona and other states.
In addition to CEO Amy Smith, Jonah Bodmer and Analise Alexander — both former TPUSA and Turning Point Action employees — work with Vote.Online’s, according to their LinkedIn pages.
And then there is the Vote.Online office, which is located in Turning Point’s Phoenix headquarters.
Vote.Online representatives did not respond to requests for comment submitted through its website.
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