A pro-Trump right-wing activist pulled an undercover stunt to try to prove voter fraud vulnerability in Alaska — but it didn’t go the way he hoped.
James O’Keefe, a provocateur best known for his operations to try to trick government officials or members of liberal organizations into embarrassing or compromising positions, showed up to an Alaska polling place, falsely identified himself as the brother of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, and filmed himself being allowed to cast a ballot without the required ID.
Murkowski has come under outrage by MAGA activists over her refusal to back President Donald Trump’s SAVE America Act, a draconian package of voter restrictions that, as Murkowski has explained, would cost some rural Alaskans thousands of dollars to comply with.
When O’Keefe emailed Murkowski’s Senate office what he had done, a staffer replied, “I appreciate your acknowledgement that a member of your organization actively engaged in voter fraud by impersonating me at a polling place in Alaska. If you could please relay the individual’s name, I will happily include it in my complaint to the Division of Elections and the Department of Law.”
Meanwhile, former Maricopa County, Arizona elections clerk Stephen Richer, a Republican himself, took to X to debunk O’Keefe’s stunt piece by piece, stating he was “a liar and a bad person” and explaining that in fact Alaska poll workers followed the law in that video.
“When O’Keefe, impersonating a registered voter, asked to vote, the poll workers repeatedly asked for his identification. He said he didn’t have identification and asked if he could still vote. The poll workers told him yes, he could vote, but it must be a ‘questioned ballot’ that goes into a security envelope,” said Richer. That ballot, called a “provisional ballot” in most other states, isn’t counted unless the voter provides ID after the fact at a local government office.
“O’Keefe did not expose an opportunity fraud. He did not expose unlawful conduct by election administrators. He did, however, record some seemingly sweet, civically-minded older Americans working the election site who tried to help him with his alleged issue,” wrote Richer. Aside from putting those poll workers in danger by recording them, Richer continued, O’Keefe may have broken the law himself, as he was in a polling place unauthorized and tried to impersonate a voter.
Lastly, noted Richer, “nothing O’Keefe did in the video would be changed as a result of the SAVE America Act. Nothing.”
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