DENVER — A Project Veritas undercover video released Wednesday shows pro-Democrat field workers in Colorado discussing ways to commit voter fraud under the state’s new all-mail election system.
Project Veritas Action founder James O’Keefe is shown having discussions with staffers from Work for Progress, Greenpeace and a Democratic state legislative campaign about pilfering mail-in ballots from trash cans or double-registering with another state.
Critics countered that the video doesn’t show anyone actually engaging in voter fraud and accused Mr. O’Keefe heavily baiting his targets into making incriminating statements.
At one point in the nearly eight-minute video, the 30-year-old Mr. O’Keefe, wearing a disguise to make him look older, tells Work for Progress state director Meredith Hicks that they should use discarded ballots to vote.
“I mean, they cheat and lie and steal all the time. They do,” Mr. O’Keefe tells Ms. Hicks in the undercover video.
She replies: “I mean, that’s not even lying or stealing. If someone throws out a ballot, if you want to fill it out, you should do it. It doesn’t have anyone’s name on it yet.”
Work for Progress, which is providing field troops to help re-elect Democratic Sen. Mark Udall, did not immediately return a phone call asking for comment. Mr. Udall is locked in a tough re-election battle with Republican Rep. Cory Gardner.
On Twitter, David Corn, a liberal columnist and Mother Jones editor, accused Mr. O’Keefe of selective editing, saying, “James, where’s the video of the Democratic staffers who said what you and your crew proposed to do would be wrong?”
The video also shows a Greenpeace staffer recommends searching for discarded ballots in apartment buildings in north Aurora, which she calls “ghetto Aurora.”
“South [Aurora] is like Yuppieville,” she says. “But north Aurora is a lot of people who, I hate to put in clichés, but people don’t care. They just, kind of like the lower class, they just don’t really [inaudible].”
A video posted a year ago by Complete Colorado’s Todd Shepherd showed several discarded ballots in his apartment building’s mail room shortly before the November 2013 election.
The Democrat-controlled state legislature approved the Voter Access and Modernized Elections Act in 2013 with no Republican votes. The law makes Colorado the third state, after Oregon and Washington, to require all mail-in elections, and makes Colorado the only state with both the all-mail vote and same-day voter registration.
The law also moves formerly inactive voters back in the election system. About 350,000 previously inactive voters received ballots this year out of a pool of 2.9 million voters, said Colorado Secretary of State spokesman Rich Coolidge.
Project Veritas, known for its undercover videos, has also released videos in the last month from the Arkansas Senate and Texas gubernatorial race.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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