Greenpeace terminated the contract of a Colorado-based worker who was caught on video seemingly condoning fraud in the state’s new vote-by-mail process.
The worker was filmed in an undercover video by Project Veritas offshoot, Project Veritas Action, headed by controversial muckraker James O’Keefe.
On the hidden camera footage, the worker in question told O’Keefe “the exact street corner in ‘ghetto Aurora’ where he could find ballots in trash cans that could be fraudulently mailed in. She said residents of the ‘ghetto’ were unlikely to vote because they ‘don’t really care.’”
Greenpeace bills itself a non-partisan organization, and a spokesperson said that the former staffer’s statements on hidden camera did not reflect the values or the views of Greenpeace.
According to polling for Colorado’s U.S. Senate election, Republican Congressman Cory Gardner leads incumbent Democrat Mark Udall by about three percent, but the all-mail-in voting procedure is a wild card.
A worker for another liberal group on the video seems to encourage O’Keefe to commit fraud with unused ballots (using words like “cool” and “awesome”), while an operative from a different group apparently suggests that voting in two states might be worth a try.
O’Keefe was unsuccessful in baiting other pro-Udall operatives into similar admissions, however.
Watch the video below and draw your own conclusions.
According to National Review , mailing ballots automatically to every voter in Colorado could lead to electoral abuse :
“Secretary of State [Scott] Gessler had futile arguments with Democratic state legislators last year who insisted on ramming a bill through that mandated Colorado become the only state in the nation with both all-mail balloting and same-day registration. Under same-day registration someone can register to vote online, have a mail ballot sent to them, and never physically show up to register or vote. Other places that use same-day registration treat the vote as a provisional ballot pending verification. Colorado immediately counts the vote and there is no way to separate it out if the person who votes is later found ineligible.”
About the new voting process, a Denver election official insisted , however, that “We have non-partisan election judges looking at every signature on every ballot that comes in before we even unseal the ballot itself. If anything doesn’t look right, we send that voter a letter asking for a better signature to match what we have on file,” Fox 31 Denver reported.
While O’Keefe has plenty of detractors for his particular brand of journalism, the Project Veritas team has exposed — primarily through undercover videos — possible election law violations by the Wendy Davis for governor campaign, the corrupt ACORN organization, prior instances of voter fraud , apparent chicanery in the Obamacare navigator program , and revealed that some outspoken anti-gun journalists declined to post gun-free zone signs outside their own homes. His group also revealed potential abuses in the so-called Obamaphone program . This summer, an O’Keefe video showed how someone wearing an Osama bin Laden mask could walk across the southern border undetected, and also, how a man wearing an ISIS uniform could cross by boat from Canada to the U.S. without being stopped.
A recent Project Veritas undercover video captured Alison Lundergan Grimes’ supporters claiming that the Democrat U.S. Senate candidate was pretending to support Kentucky’s coal industry just to win votes.
O’Keefe also pleaded guilty to misdemeanor after a failed stunt at the office of U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu in 2010.
Here is the statement from Greenpeace Molly Dorozenski. “Her contract has been terminated” pic.twitter.com/wlBcwdygVx
— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) October 24, 2014
In general, undercover videos have been a traditional part of a reporter’s playbook, at least until the 2008 presidential election, at which point the national mainstream media seemed to abandon investigative journalism.
Irrespective perhaps of your opinion, if any, about James O’Keefe or his tactics, do you think voter fraud will be a significant issue in Colorado and/or in other elections around the country? In this particular case, did Greenpeace act appropriately?
[top image via Ju1978 / Shutterstock.com ]