EXCLUSIVE: Undercover video shows North Carolina poll workers offering ballots to ineligible impostor – TWENTY TIMES – putting voter ID battle on the front burner
- Conservative guerrilla filmmaker James O'Keefe pretended to be a series of North Carolinians who hadn't voted in years
- In precinct after precinct, election officials offered him ballots without confirming his identity
- Only one polling place turned him away without an ID, but officials there were breaking the rules in order to do it
- O'Keefe famously embarrassed US Attorney General Eric Holder by obtaining the cabinet member's ballot in Washington as a protest against the lack of an ID mandate at the polls – a racially charged US controversy
- New Mexico officials said Saturday that someone had fraudulently voted in the name of a man who later showed up in person to cast his ballot
North
Carolina election officials repeatedly offered ballots last week to an
impostor who arrived at polling places with the names and addresses of
'inactive' voters who hadn't participated in elections for many years.
No
fraudulent votes were actually cast: It was the latest undercover video
sting from conservative activist James O'Keefe, whose filmmaking résumé
reads like a target list of liberal causes.
He
famously shuttered ACORN, the community organizing outfit once linked
to Barack Obama. He dressed in an Osama bin Laden costume and waded
across the Rio Grande from Mexico to America as a show of disdain for
U.S. border policy. He videotaped people admitting they sold
taxpayer-provided cellphones for drugs, shoes, handbags and spending
cash.
Now
O'Keefe has strolled into more than 20 voting precincts in Raleigh,
Durham and Greensboro, N.C., proffering the names of people who seldom
vote in order to test the integrity of the election process. It seems to
have failed on a massive scale.
'I just sign this and then I can vote?' he asked one poll worker. 'Yep,' came the reply.
SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO
In precinct after precinct, North
Carolina election officials confirmed that anyone can participate there
on Election Day without proving he or she is eligible to vote
In all, 20 locations offered to let an
undercover impostor vote on the same day he turned up with only someone
else's name and address
North Carolina is one of 33 states –
plus the District of Columbia – where voters can cast ballots long
before election day, and one of 19 states where people can vote without
showing any documents whatsoever. In 2016, however, an aggressive voter
ID law will take effect in the Tarheel State.
Last
week O'Keefe's Project Veritas Action organization took its first
deep-dive into North Carolina election politics, filming Democratic
campaign workers saying they would help illegal immigrants vote for
incumbent Senator Kay Hagan.
This
time he strolled into polling places in Raleigh, Durham and Greensboro
to see how easy it would be to vote fraudulently in the name of another
person. He was offered twenty ballots at a variety of polling places
before a pair of officials finally challenged him.
'They
wanted to protect the system,' O'Keefe says in the video, released
exclusively to MailOnline. 'They had to break the rules to do it.'
'Of all of the undercover investigations I've conducted, this was by far the easiest,'he said Monday.
'They were willing to pass out fraudulently obtained ballots like it was Halloween candy.'
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If
North Carolina is a hotbed of voter fraud – conservatives suggest it is,
and that the dynamic benefits Democrats – the ground rules will change
before the 2016 election.
In
2013 Governor Pat McCrory signed a set of sweeping new voting rules
into law, including a no-exceptions requirement that voters show a
government-issued ID on Election Day.
'The
state legislature took extremely aggressive steps to curtail the voting
rights of African-Americans,' U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder claimed
at the time.
After
a lawsuit from the Obama administration and a series of legal appeals,
the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month that the state is entitled to
make voters prove who they are.
That
provision of the law won't go into effect until 2016 – other sections,
including a ban on same-day voter registration, are in force already –
making this go-round the last of its kind in the Tarheel State.
But
McCrory's government is already sending Department of Motor Vehicles
mobile units into 32 communities this month, two years ahead of time, to
provide free IDs to anyone who wants them.
Guerrilla videographer James O'Keefe
went to polling places in three North Carolina cities, posing as people
who records show hadn't voted in ages
Election officials offered O'Keefe
forms to sign and promised they would let him vote (he never actually
signed forms, voted, or claimed to be the people whose names he was
using)
Ballots for everyone: Helpful election
workers are following the law by opening the voting booth to all
comers, but in 2016 the system will be turned on its head
The
offer is an important one: The 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
prohibits the levying of 'poll taxes,' meaning that if an ID is required
to vote, a free option must be made available.
By
this time in 2016, the state government hopes, naysayers who see the
voter ID law as a barrier to minorities and the poor will see hundreds
of thousands of new, zero-cost IDs coming out of voters' wallets and
purses.
For
now, though, O'Keefe is using North Carolina as a proxy for the other
42 states – and the District of Columbia – which don't require voters to
show a photo ID.
His
crew used publicly available election rolls to identify 'inactive'
voters and then chose 30-year-old men for him to impersonate.
The final footage shows election officials, over and over, accepting O'Keefe's claim that he was one of those people.
'With
almost three-quarters-of-a-million inactive voters and no voter ID law
in place, we could have turned the election results for most major
candidates in the state,' he claimed Monday.
'What
we uncovered in this video illustrates how easy it would be for a
well-orchestrated campaign with no regard for the law to change the
outcome of a major election. Voter laws across the country need to be
changed immediately to prevent this sort of potential voter fraud.'
FINALLY: One poll worker realized that
the name and address O'Keefe offered belonged to someone who hadn't
voted in a long time – but he actually broke the law by insisting on
seeing identification
O'Keefe has tweaked the political left on the contentious voter ID issue before.
In
2012 he filmed an actor walking into a Washington, D.C. polling place
and giving an official the name and address of Eric Holder – the U.S.
attorney general who was so outspoken against ID requirements.
The
young man was offered the high-ranking Obama administration official's
ballot before pulling O'Keefe pulled the plug on their experiment.
In
the resulting video, the impostor is seen offering to go to his car and
produce a photo ID 'faster than you can say "furious"' – a dig at
Holder, who presided over the botched Operation Fast and Furious
gunwalking scandal.
'You don’t need it,' the poll worker replied, referring to the ID. 'It’s all right.'
'As long as you’re in here, you’re on our list, and that’s who you say you are, you’re okay.'
In
other videos, O'Keefe has demonstrated that New Hampshire residents
could get ballots in the names of deceased persons, and that Minnesotans
could vote by offering the names of sports superstars including New
England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.
Some voter fraud episodes, though, become news on their own.
One
that surfaced on Saturday appeared to track with what might have
happened if O'Keefe had broken the law and actually voted with the
ballots he was offered.
In
Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, the county clerk reported that a voter
trying to cast an ballot during the 'early voting' period was shocked to
learn that someone had already voted in his name three days earlier.
In North Carolina, as in 18 other
states and five US territories, no identification at all is required
before people exercise their right to vote in the 2014 congressional
midterm elections
Racist? Some civil rights activists
insist a move to require IDs at the polls is rooted in anti-black
prejudice, but the late South African President Nelson Mandela advocated
the same policy at the start of the African National Congress 1999
election campaign
He hadn't voted, he insisted. And the signature on the first voter card filed in his name didn't match his own.
The man was allowed to vote on what's known as a 'provisional ballot,' and it's unclear whether it will be counted.
Bobbi Shearer, the Director of New Mexico's Bureau of Elections, told KOB-TV4 that local election officials in the state's northern reaches weren't to blame.
'I have nothing but praise for their efforts to try to ensure integrity in the election,' Shearer said.
'It
is just that under current law, there are no means available to poll
workers to help them determine if a voter is actually the person he says
he is.'
Like North Carolina, New Mexico has no law on the books requiring an ID on Election Day.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2818443/James-O-Keefe-s-video-shows-North-Carolina-poll-workers-offering-ballots.html#ixzz3I1gRUYkV
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Voter fraud is going on all over our country Rick. Especially in "pure" North Carolina."
ReplyDeleteBullShit, BullShit, BullShit, Lie, Lie, Lie,,,
ReplyDeleteEarly voting only give these thieves more time to "organize" their election fraud.
BullShit Rick, you live in a corrupt State.
Congratulations.
You are a gullible fool. No wonder you like Brietbart and Faux news so much.
ReplyDeleteYou deserve Hagen and Obama. Live with it.
DeleteBlack unemployment is up and their incomes are down under Obama. You support Obama so you must be a racist ric.
Deleteblack unemployment is up and incomes are down because the repubs forced a bit of trickle down on Obama. Did you not learn anything from the article on who really wrecked the economy.
DeleteAfter six years it's still Bush's fault, the house republicans fault, the tsunami, weakness in the European union, Japan, yada, yada, yada,,,
DeleteWhy doesn't Obama just admit that he's crap when it actually comes to governing.
Ha ha William considering all the obstructionism of the past 6 years Obama has actually done quite well thank you.
Delete