Undercover Journalists Test Minnesota’s Voter Vouching System on Primary Election Day, Find Vulnerabilities!
By Debra HeineConservative journalists disguised as a Muslims say poll workers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, were going to let them vote in other peoples’ names and vouch for eight other unregistered foreigners during the state’s primary election on Tuesday.
Minnesota allows same-day voter registration, even for individuals who do not have identification, if a registered voter from the same precinct vouches for their residency. A registered voter can vouch for up to eight people after signing an oath in front of an election judge. A key vulnerability is that Minnesota does not require voters to show identification to verify who they are.
Citizen Justice League reporter Cam Higby, O’Keefe Media Group (OMG) founder James O’Keefe and other undercover reporters showed up at multiple polling locations across Minneapolis Tuesday, dressed in Muslim garb to test how much fraud Minnesota would allow them commit on Election Day.
The answer, to no one’s surprise, turned out to be a lot.
Fraudulently assuming the name of a registered voter named William Pomerantz, O’Keefe told an election worker at the first location that the people accompanying him were not registered and asked whether he could vouch for them.
“I can vouch for them? They are not registered,” he said, attempting a Middle Eastern accent.
“That’s okay. That’s fine. Yeah!” the election worker responded, without asking for any identification for verification.
O’Keefe then asked whether he could leave and return with five more people. The female worker told him he could vouch for up to eight.
“Up to eight people?” O’Keefe asked.
“Yes,” the worker responded.
O’Keefe told the woman he would go back, get additional people, and return to the polling location.
The team of undercover journalists then moved to another Minneapolis polling location to see if they would get the same response.
There, an election worker explained that if the people lived in the same precinct as him, allegedly a registered voter, he could vouch for their residency. Except O’Keefe is not a registered voter in Minnesota. He was using another Minnesota voter’s name, and again, he was not asked for identification.
“You can vouch for them as I.D. for them,” the woman at the second location told O’Keefe.
“No I.D. needed, I just vouch for them?” O’Keefe asked the woman.
“You’re the I.D.,” she replied.
Outside the polling station, O’Keefe, still in character, marveled at what the poll worker had just told him.
“She says to me I don’t need I.D.—I am the I.D.! She says you are the I.D.!”
Higby, posing as O’Keefe’s “transgender Muslim wife” clad in a full burka, echoed the mantra, “he is the I.D.!,” he exclaimed.
The intrepid undercover reporters continued to additional polling locations, including White Park Recreation Center, where they pressed for more details on how the system worked.
After establishing that a registered voter could vouch for up to eight unregistered people with no I.D.s the undercover reporter asked the poll worker what actually happens after someone is vouched for.
The worker told him that the voucher is required to sign a legal oath affirming that they know the individuals and know they live in the area. The individuals being vouched for also have to sign an oath affirming their identity and eligibility to vote.
When asked whether their eligibility was actually verified, the worker responded, “After the fact, yeah.”
O’Keefe said the investigation “was designed to take that system off the pages of the statute book and put it to an extreme real-world test.”
In most of the cases, it appeared the poll workers were prepared to allow O’Keefe and company to vouch for up to eight unregistered people as fake registered voters without asking for identification to verify their identities.
According to O’Keefe, some poll workers became suspicious of the operation and communicated concerns about the team over their radios.
The contrast was striking.
“The same conduct that some election workers treated as permissible under Minnesota’s vouching rules raised immediate concerns among others,” O’Keefe noted.
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