Watch Project Veritas’ Colorado video.
James O’Keefe (AP file photo)
It was just a matter of time before Colorado’s new all-mail voting law, which has been the subject of Republican concerns about increased risk of voter fraud, drew attention from the likes of conservative instigator James O’Keefe. He’s the guy who torpedoed liberal group ACORN and embarrassed National Public Radio brass with their own words, using undercover videos.
His latest was compiled from video recorded recently by O’Keefe, wearing a disguise, and his Project Veritas Action team in Northern Colorado at Democratic groups’ get-out-the-vote offices and with a state House campaign worker. It kicks off with O’Keefe saying: “Project Veritas Action found a number of people in Colorado who don’t seem to have much problem with illegal voting.”
The video is promoted as showing advocates for Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Udall condoning voter fraud, though it doesn’t show Udall’s campaign itself taking part.
What the video doesn’t say at the start is that, as left-leaning Mother Jones reported this week, O’Keefe also encountered many people on campaigns and independent groups who sniffed out quickly what he was up to. Those folks didn’t play ball. (O’Keefe notes in passing later that some people recognized him.)
Republicans including Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler, who’s interviewed in O’Keefe’s video, vigorously opposed the Colorado voting reforms, including same-day voter registration. They were passed last year on strictly party-line votes by Democrats. Colorado has become the third all-mail balloting state, after Oregon and Washington State.
The comments to Mother Jones show O’Keefe’s strategy: He visited a lot of campaigning groups’ offices and met with some who scoffed at his team’s leading questions, seeking guidance for actions that would constitute voter fraud. Udall communications director Chris Harris told Mother Jones that based on the reports from those who refused to take part, O’Keefe was “using sleazy, deceptive tactics to undermine the public’s trust in democracy.”
But he apparently encountered others with a poor understanding of voting law (or disregard for it) and were happy to offer counsel.
Their comments are likely to embarrass Democratic supporters of the Colorado voting reforms, though the video doesn’t show anyone following through by committing voter fraud.
O’Keefe’s video purports to show people who work with Greenpeace, Work For Progress-Boulder and state Rep. Joe Salazar’s campaign taking the bait. They were asked whether people can vote multiple times using ballots sent to people who have moved — for instance, former residents of a college fraternity. One campaign worker tells them the best parts of Aurora where they might be most likely to find discarded ballots in trash cans. Another doesn’t seem to understand the problem with an O’Keefe associate suggesting her friends plan to vote by mail in both Colorado and Oregon this year.
Anyone who attempted to carry out such ploys, though, would be reminded that it’s illegal each time they put a ballot into the envelope. Voters must sign next to a statement on the back, under penalty of perjury, affirming that the ballot is the only one they’re submitting in this election. As a safeguard, counties review the signatures as they come in, comparing them to their records.
