Conservative activist and filmmaker James O’Keefe released a shocking video on Wednesday apparently showing Patrick Moran, son of and campaign field manager for Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), facilitating voter fraud by instructing an undercover videographer on how to forge documents to give to poll workers.
Moran has since resigned from his father’s campaign, claiming he thought the cameraman “was joking.”
“He’ll need something with a name and their address on it,” Patrick Moran tells the cameraman, who says he and an acquaintance plan to vote fraudulently for 100 people. “There will be a lot of voter protections so if they just have, they’ll just need a utility bill or a bank statement — bank statement would obviously be tough — but they can fake a utility bill with ease, you know?”
“It has to be a utility bill or something like that,” Moran notes later in the video. “So you’ll have to forge it.”
In order to gather names of voters who are not planning on going to the polls on election day – and who therefore would make viable targets for fraudulent voting – Moran suggests the cameraman pose as a pollster to find disengaged people or people who are not likely to vote.
42 U.S.C. 1973gg-10(2) makes it a federal felony for anyone to attempt to “deprive or defraud the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process, by…the procurement, casting, or tabulation of ballots that are known by the person to materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent.”
Moran’s behavior would seem to fall squarely within this federal statute. It is a serious violation of the law and it should be investigated by both the Virginia Attorney General and the Office of the United States Attorney in Alexandria.
The video is the latest from O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, which made a splash with its 2009 sting at offices of the now-defunct Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. The video points out not only why states like Virginia should implement photo ID requirements for voting, but the unfortunate willingness of some who work in campaigns to commit fraud to win elections.
