Hennepin County prosecutors on Wednesday charged James O’Keefe, 42, and Cam Higby, 26, with felony unlawful voting and identity theft over videos they filmed during Minnesota’s Aug. 11 primary, according to a news release from the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office.
The office said both men visited multiple precincts in Hennepin County and misrepresented their identities by giving election judges the names of registered voters in the precinct, without those voters’ knowledge or permission. The office said they posted the videos to social media to try to undermine confidence in Minnesota’s voting systems.
Secretary of State Steve Simon said in the release that any attempt to disrupt or deceive election workers “will not be tolerated.”
The release cites a Minnesota law that bars intentionally misrepresenting a person’s identity when applying for a ballot, depositing a ballot in a ballot box or attempting to vote by machine. It did not say when O’Keefe and Higby are due in court.
What the video of James O’Keefe showed
The charges stem from videos seen millions of times, in which activists who call themselves the Citizen Justice League posed as Minnesota voters. The group said they were testing Minnesota’s 53-year-old voter voucher law.
The video begins with undercover activists, donning what they called Muslim costumes, using fake accents and claiming to be Minnesota voters vouching for the others.
Minnesota’s voucher law is intended to help people who just moved to the state vote. It allows a registered voter to vouch that someone lives where they say they do. The law does not allow people to impersonate real Minnesota voters.
The video shows O’Keefe, the ousted founder of Project Veritas and now of O’Keefe Media Group, falsely identifying himself to election officials as William Pomeranz. CBS News Minnesota spoke to the real William Pomeranz, who, on Election Day, kept getting odd messages.
“I actually had a student contact me that had showed me what was online about my identity being misrepresented. So, that was pretty much a shock. I found out on Friday,” Pomeranz said.
CBS News Minnesota reported in August that the group’s members did not go ahead with voting illegally.
“Kudos to the poll workers. They reported it afterwards, and frankly, I got to vote that evening without a problem. So, you know, the voting process, in my mind, worked,” Pomeranz said.
“It’s illegal in the state of Minnesota to impersonate another voter, and this is apparently what O’Keefe did,” David Schultz, a constitutional law professor at Hamline University, said in August.
In August, Schultz, Pomeranz and Simon said the video shows the system worked.
“As I read the law, you can’t impersonate another registered voter, and that’s exactly what they appear to have filmed themselves doing,” Simon said at the time.