Marble Falls      First, a Zoom call ended with some “good news” – James O’Keefe was arrested in Minnesota on felony charges connected with election fraud.  A Minneapolis friend and comrade sent a message crowing that “his bull-stuff doesn’t play in Minnesota.”  Messages on Facebook trumpeted the same news.  Today’s report was going to write itself.  What was this guy thinking to try his self-promo rightwing money-grubbing gambit in Minnesota of all places?  Has he not read any news from George Floyd to ICE attacks?  Minnesota has become a stand-in for the America we want to be.

To the point, the fool and his colleagues dressed up, as they have done in the past, as caricature Muslim Imans with flowing robes and burkas.  O’Keefe and another guy are charged with identity theft and unlawful voting.  O’Keefe has been in one nefarious scandal after another. He made the big time with his ACORN scam in 2009, conning many in politics, the media, and philanthropy and forcing the reorganization and bankruptcy of the organization in 2010.  He was convicted of breaking into then Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu’s office several years later.  He formed the misnamed Veritas Project, making lies out of claims around journalist truth.  More recently he was kicked out of Veritas for misappropriation of funds fueling his own narcissism.  Now he seems to be straining to hold onto a place in the radical conservative firmament through the Florida-based James O’Keefe Media Group, but it’s all second verse, same as the first.

This harebrained scheme was his ill-researched attempt to make a farce out of Minnesota’s so-called vouching law.  Minnesota, like many states, allows same day voter registration.  It’s not simple, and there are many guardrails.

To vote, all Minnesotans need to provide a valid ID card — driver’s license, state ID, etc. — that also includes their current address, or they can provide both an ID and an approved document (bill, lease agreement, etc.) that includes the address. Most voters don’t need to bring those documents on Election Day, …but those documents are required for same-day registration.  For Minnesotans who’ve recently moved or don’t yet have a document with their address, they can bring their ID and another registered voter from their same voting precinct, and that registered voter can vouch for the Minnesotan’s address by signing an oath to satisfy the document requirement for same-day registration.  According to the Secretary of State’s website, “The potential voter must still provide their Minnesota driver’s license or ID card number or the last four digits of their Social Security number for identity verification.”  Under the law…vouchers must sign an affidavit under penalty of perjury that they personally know the person being vouched for is a resident of the precinct.

Pretty exhaustive and straightforward.  The Secretary of State claims the number of vouchers in the last election was 0.6% and there’s never been a fraud case.  Sadly, basic research seems, once again, not to be standard operating procedure in the O’Keefe agent provocateur manual.  In addition to the Halloween anti-Muslim costumes, he first claimed to be “William Pomeranz”, who is in fact a registered MN voter.  This is where the identity theft and attempted illegal voting charges from the county attorney hit home.  O’Keefe and his posse try to prevaricate here by saying they just “stated” the name, but did not “claim” to be Pomeranz, which in fact is exactly what they were trying to do, while asking election and local officials not to believe their lying eyes and ears.  Someone in his crowd reportedly shouted that he would vouch for them, but they left when they were asked to sign the oath that is part of the process.

Basically, O’Keefe’s publicity stunt seems to have proven that the Minnesota election officials, at the local and state level, are on top of their jobs and that the vouching law works, which is the opposite of his intent.  Now he and his team are trying to raise money off the escapade of course.  They will need some money to fight the charges and their arrest, meanwhile Minnesota has stood up once again, O’Keefe has been forced to stand down once again, and the election moves forward to a reckoning for all of this radical right mischief.