“I wish I could muster some righteous indignation over this outrage. But the thing is, O’Keefe didn’t get very far.”
That’s a line from a piece in the Detroit Free Press this Wednesday by Brian Dickerson, referring to conservative ‘journalist provocateur’ James O’Keefe’s recent attempt to prove the Republican’s myth of rampant voter fraud. Part of O’Keef’s latest Project Veritas sting video featured him impersonating Dickerson.
The video shows O’Keefe telling Michigan poll workers that he wants to vote but has lost his driver’s license. According to Michigan law, voters who don’t have ID must present an affidavit.
After calling the Birmingham City Clerk’s Office, an employee instructs O’Keefe to sign the affidavit before voting. Instead of doing so, O’Keefe claimed the interaction proved the voter law was too soft. O’Keefe then took the video of his findings to confront City Clerk Laura Pierce.
But unbeknownst to O’Keefe and not mentioned in the video is the fact that Dickerson and the employee, Cindy Rose, know each other.
“Rose and I know each other pretty well. I see her every time I vote, and far more frequently in the nearby park where I walk my dog,” Dickerson said. “And it’s not just me; Rose has been a volunteer in my precinct for nine years running, and she recognizes most of the voters she encounters every Election Day.”
If O’Keefe had signed the affidavit, he would have committed a felony – a felony that Rose was apparently trying to bait him into.
As O’Keefe was on his way to claim victory with video in hand, Rose was already on the phone with the City Clerk’s Office.
“In the video, Rose chooses not to share this intelligence with the intrepid impostor, curious to see how far he will press his scheme,” Dickerson writes.
Even if Dickerson hadn’t voted absentee a week before, O’Keefe’s antics would have raised flags.
From Talking Points Memo:
Pierce, the city clerk, told Dickerson that if the columnist hadn’t voted absentee and had come to vote after an impersonator had voted in his name, the worker would have confirmed Dickerson was Dickerson with an ID, and then called the police.
Dickerson added that the Birmingham police proactively opened an investigation into whether O’Keefe had committed any crime by verbally misrepresenting himself to the poll workers, but that the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office appeared to not be pursuing the case it “had bigger fish to fry,” Dickerson wrote.
“James O’Keefe is a professional liar,” Dickerson concluded. “He just isn’t very good at it.”
Watch O’Keefe’s video below:
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