Video Purports to Show Ease of Voter Fraud in N.H. Primary - East Idaho News
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Video Purports to Show Ease of Voter Fraud in N.H. Primary

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Getty P 102910 PeopleVotingPolls?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1326423952497Ethan Miller/Getty Images(CONCORD, N.H.) — A video posted the day after the New Hampshire primary from conservative gonzo James O’Keefe either exposes why voting laws are too lax or comes close to itself being voter fraud (or both), by obtaining the ballots of dead Granite Staters on primary day.

The video has already sparked an investigation in the New Hampshire State Attorney General’s office, both because of the weaknesses of the electoral system it seems to demonstrate and the potential legal violations those making the film might have committed, according to N.H. Associate Attorney General Richard Head.

Poll workers in the video offer up ballots without requesting identification from off-camera operatives. Members of O’Keefe’s Project Veritas give names that the video alleges belong to deceased New Hampshire voters and receive ballots, even when they report that they forgot their IDs in the car. It would be considered voter fraud were any of them to vote under these names, but none of them do — at least on camera.

When one woman hears that the man she is attempting to give a ballot is dead and is asked if she might have any other deceased residents on her list, she laughs and asks, “How would I know if they were dead or not?”

Republicans in the state legislature passed a bill this summer that would have required photo identification for New Hampshire voters, but Governor John Lynch vetoed that legislation, saying, “An eligible voter who goes to the polls to vote on Election Day should be able to have his or her vote count on Election Day.”

New Hampshire officials may take issue with the way in which this experiment was performed. It is against the New Hampshire State Code to record a conversation without the consent of both parties, and there is no evidence in the footage to support that those poll workers were aware they were being filmed.

Head said the state’s Attorney General’s Office became aware of the issue on election day and “immediately began conducting an investigation,” which he described as, “ongoing.”

To his knowledge, Head said that the question of voter fraud in the form of people taking ballots under the names of the deceased had not come up in the Granite State in the past.

In September 2011, the Department of Justice began reviewing an election law in South Carolina that required registered voters to produce a government-issued photo ID at the polls.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

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