11/3/2014
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
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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.
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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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