Election fraud disproven

The provocateur James O’Keefe set out to prove Minnesota’s elections are wide open to fraud. He may instead have produced the most convincing evidence yet that they aren’t.
It’s a worthwhile lesson at a time when a certain American with a very large megaphone spends so much of his timing spewing misinformation about our elections.
For those wanting a recap, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty charged O’Keefe, the right-wing founder of Project Veritas, and fellow influencer Cam Higby with felony unlawful voting and identity theft. Prosecutors allege that during the Aug. 11 primary the two men, disguised in what they called “Muslim” costumes and affecting foreign accents, visited three Minneapolis polling places and gave election judges the names and addresses of four real registered voters who had never agreed to lend them their identities.
O’Keefe’s target was Minnesota’s vouching law, which has been on the books since 1973 and has long enjoyed bipartisan support. It allows a registered voter to swear under oath that another voter lives in the precinct so those people can register on Election Day. In practice, it mostly serves voters who are already registered but have moved, along with seniors living in congregate care facilities. O’Keefe’s heavily edited video, viewed millions of times, suggested that anyone in a costume could stroll in, vouch for someone, and help tip an election.
O’Keefe will never show the full videos to his followers because they prove exactly the opposite. According to court records, when election judges asked the men to sign the voter’s oath, the sworn statement at the heart of the vouching process, they left. Neither received a ballot. Neither cast a ballot. At one polling place, they walked out after being asked for identification.
Keep in mind, these are among the most motivated, most camera-ready propagandists in America, men whose entire business model depends on catching public officials in unguarded moments. They reached the decisive moment, the point where the fraud would undeniably be put in writing, and they got cold feet. Prosecutors say they had already broken the law by using other people’s names. But signing a false oath, under state law, would be proof positive of a felony. Moriarty called the oath a major deterrent against fraud. O’Keefe proved her point.
So, consider for a moment the figures at the center of so much Republican rhetoric: the undocumented immigrants our president insists are flooding the polls.
To pull off what O’Keefe attempted, such an immigrant would need the name and address of a real registered voter. They would have to stand in a public line, under the eyes of election judges who often know their neighbors. They would have to lie to an official, then sign a sworn document that is recorded and checked against the statewide voter database after the election. Minnesota verifies every Election Day registration, vouched-for voters included. Lying on a registration form alone is a felony carrying up to five years in prison.
And the reward for all that risk? One vote. One additional mark in a race often decided by thousands or tens of thousands of ballots.
The cost, if caught, is a felony conviction, and possible prison time. For a noncitizen, likely deportation, meaning the loss of a job, a home, and perhaps a family’s whole life in this country. No rational person makes that trade. Which is why voter fraud by non-citizens is virtually non-existent.
Someone living in the shadows has every incentive to avoid government offices, not to walk into one and commit a crime in front of witnesses. Even a propagandist with a legal defense fund and millions of followers wouldn’t sign on that line.
That is why voter fraud cases never seem to materialize. When officials of both parties go looking for noncitizen voting, they regularly come up empty. While the Trump administration has claimed they have found thousands of ineligible voters, by the time states comb through their records they find those targeted are, in fact, citizens who can legally vote. The fraud O’Keefe was trying to dramatize is so rare because the system is designed to catch such infractions and the penalties for violators are significant.
None of this excuses O’Keefe’s stunt. Real voters had their identities used without permission. Poll workers were deceived on camera. And the choice to dress the deception in crude stereotypes of Muslims, in a city with a large Somali community, added insult to the lawbreaking.
O’Keefe proved that the system worked. The would-be exposé exposed something its authors never intended: that the fraud they keep promising to find requires a felony almost nobody is willing to commit.
Minnesotans went to the polls in near-record numbers for the midterms this week. They can continue to do so in the future, in full confidence that our elections remain secure.