Hennepin County prosecutors on Wednesday said they charged conservative provocateur James O\u2019Keefe and another man with felonies for unlawful voting and identity theft for filming themselves misrepresenting their identities to election judges during the Minnesota Aug. 11 primary.<\/p>\n
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said they were alerted by the Minnesota Secretary of State\u2019s Office that James O’Keefe, Cameron Higby and others were trying to undermine the state’s vouching system. <\/p>\n
Videos posted by O’Keefe\u2019s operation show them wearing burkas outside precincts during the primary<\/a>. Moriarty said the voter names they used included some residents who were dead and at least one who voted.<\/p>\n In the videos, O\u2019Keefe, using an accent, asks workers at polling places if he can vouch for other voters. The election workers explain the law around vouching as one of his team members films and then his team walks out. <\/p>\n MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. <\/p>\n “Alright guys, it\u2019s Election Day in Minneapolis. James O\u2019Keefe and I are going to go around the city to different polling stations and we’re going to see if they’re going to allow us to vote without IDs and then we’re going to see if they are going to allow us to vouch for other people who aren’t even registered to vote,\u201d Higby said in the video posted to YouTube.<\/p>\n Secretary of State Steve Simon later said the poll workers did exactly what they were supposed to do to protect the integrity of the election. <\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s pretty clear they did not intend to vote. That\u2019s not the question here,\u201d Moriarty said Wednesday as she unveiled the charges against O\u2019Keefe and Higby. <\/p>\n While neither man signed the oath to vouch for the other would-be voter \u2014 an act Moriarty said would have been felony perjury \u2014 \u201cyou cannot give somebody else\u2019s name and misrepresent yourself as you go through the process.\u201d<\/p>\n An initial court appearance for O\u2019Keefe and Higby has been set for Nov. 16.<\/p>\n The state has several ways for unregistered voters to register on Election Day, including vouching. To vouch for someone, a voter who is already registered in the precinct goes with an unregistered voter to the voting precinct and signs an oath confirming the unregistered voter\u2019s address. Under state law, a registered voter can vouch for up to eight people. <\/p>\n State court records show the specific election interference charges against O’Keefe and Higby have only been used once since 2021.<\/p>\n MPR News reached out to O\u2019Keefe and Higby for comment but have not heard back.<\/p>\n In a press release in August, O\u2019Keefe\u2019s group, which calls itself the \u201cJustice League,\u201d said the people in the video \u201cdid not cast ballots. The investigation was intended to test the limits of Minnesota\u2019s vouching law and document how election workers apply it on Election Day.\u201d<\/p>\n After the charges were announced Wednesday, Higby went on social media to fundraise, saying Minnesota officials wanted to imprison him “for exposing election vulnerabilities in their state.” He denied breaking any state laws.<\/p>\n O\u2019Keefe is known for making undercover videos. His videos have led to criminal charges against him in the past and he was caught by Washington Post reporters in 2017 for attempting to sell them on a false story<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is not against the law to be performative. It is not against the law to be offensive,\u201d Moriarty told reporters. But \u201cyou cannot go into a polling place and misidentify yourself and use someone\u2019s identity and say that to our election judges as you apply for a ballot.\u201d<\/p>\n In a statement after the charges were announced Wednesday, Simon said \u201cMinnesota\u2019s enduring tradition of high voter turnout and excellence in elections administration is due in part to the work we all do to keep polling places as \u2018islands of calm.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAny attempt to disrupt or deceive our election workers will not be tolerated. We are grateful to our law enforcement partners for holding these individuals to account,\u201d Simon said.<\/p>\n MPR News reporter Peter Cox contributed to this story.<\/p>\n Use the audio player above to hear MPR News reporter Jon Collins explain this story on Minnesota Now. <\/p>\n Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hennepin County prosecutors on Wednesday said they charged conservative provocateur James O\u2019Keefe and another man with felonies for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":897974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-897973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=897973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/897974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=897973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=897973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=897973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}