Conservative US influencers James O’Keefe and Cam Higby are facing felony charges over a video on Minnesota voting practices that allow one to “vouch” for eight others from the same precinct, while not having to show any ID.
Titled ‘I Wore Burqa To EXPOSE Election FRAUD In Minneapolis’, the stunt was shot during the Minnesota primary election in August. It features Higby posing as a Muslim woman dressed up in a full-face veil, with O’Keefe also wearing mock Muslim attire and speaking in a thick accent.
US President Donald Trump has for years alleged that Democrats have committed voter fraud, including by allegedly allowing non-citizens to participate in elections. The Republican has long advocated a standardized photo ID verification for voting.
On Wednesday, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office announced that O’Keefe and Higby had been charged with unlawful voting and identity theft. According to Attorney Mary Moriarty, the pair had “visited multiple precincts… and misrepresented their identities by giving election judges names of registered voters in the precinct without those voters’ knowledge or permission.”
Speaking during a press conference, Moriarty said that summonses had been issued in both men’s names. Should O’Keefe and Higby fail to appear in court, an arrest warrant will follow, the official clarified.
While the Hennepin County attorney conceded that neither man signed an oath for ‘vouching’, she insisted that they still intentionally misrepresented “their identity to election judges in applying for a ballot.”
The conservative influencers availed themselves of a procedure which allows a registered voter in Minnesota to vouch for up to eight other voters from the same precinct, permitting the latter to cast their ballots without any further verification. Under Minnesota law, a person vouching for someone else must sign an oath and could face charges of perjury if it turns out that they lied on it.
Commenting on the charges filed against him in the Democratic-run state, Higby wrote on X that he was “not afraid of Minnesota.”
In their video, the conservative influencers specifically state they are “not actually going to vote… [and] touch any ballots,” with no intention to “break the law [or] to commit voter fraud.”
The idea was rather to “point out the vulnerabilities in the system and how easily exploitable it is,” O’Keefe and Higby explain.
Having visited three polling stations in different precincts, the pair concluded that “any person who has the address and name of another person can walk into a Minnesota… polling station and vote in that person’s name without ID.”
Additionally, poll workers “were going to allow me to vouch for eight other people so that they could vote the same day, also without verifying their ID,” Higby says in the video.
Late last year, Minnesota was thrust into the national spotlight after the federal authorities launched an investigation into an unrelated alleged fraud scheme involving multiple childcare centers run by locals of Somali background that appeared to be non-operational fronts.
The probe followed an expose by YouTuber Nick Shirley who claimed that the alleged fraudsters had received more than $110 million in state funds for non-existent services.
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