An undercover video could land a handful of activists in legal trouble. They pretended to be Minnesota voters during the primary.
The group calling themselves the Citizen Justice League said they were testing Minnesota’s 53-year-old voter voucher law. But in videos now seen more than 7 million times, they may have broken the law instead.
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 James 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.
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.
The man in the video who falsely identified himself as William Pomeranz, whose real name is James O’Keefe, may have put himself in legal jeopardy.
“It’s illegal in the state of Minnesota to impersonate another voter, and this is apparently what O’Keefe did,” said David Schultz, a constitutional law professor at Hamline University.
Schultz, Pomeranz and Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon say 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.
Impersonating a Minnesota voter at a polling place is a felony punishable by a maximum of seven years in prison and a fine of up to $20,000.
CBS News Minnesota reached out to the Citizen Justice League and was waiting to hear back.
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to clarify that the undercover video operation was conducted, in part, by the former founder of Project Veritas, who is now CEO of the O’Keefe Media Group.
