Once again Minnesota has been exposed by an outsider with a video camera. And once again, Minnesota state officials and their public relations team (local media) are crying foul. Undercover journalist James O’Keefe returned to Minnesota to once again expose the vulnerabilities in our election system. You may remember O’Keefe’s last visit in 2020 when he acquired video of Liban Osman showing off a few hundred ballots on the dashboard of his van. Osman was on his way to the Hennepin County Elections office to deliver ballots he had harvested in direct violation of state law.
This time O’Keefe’s target was Minnesota’s ridiculous practice of allowing one registered voter to vouch for up to eight others on election day. He and a colleague entered several polling places dressed in what they called “traditional Muslim attire” to expose how easy it is to vouch for and register people to vote on election day.
O’Keefe began the check-in process using the name of a registered voter in the precinct and then immediately asked election workers about the vouching process. Election workers explained he could vouch for up to eight voters saying, “You can vouch for them as ID for them. You are the ID.”
This may sound outrageous to anyone not living in Minnesota, but O’Keefe was simply exposing current election law. The poll workers said or did nothing wrong. If O’Keefe was actually a registered voter, he could have brought in eight other voters and signed an oath affirming they live in his precinct. The voters would then go through the registration process and sign their own oath saying they are who they say they are. And then they vote. And their vote disappears into the machine with all the other votes.
O’Keefe left the polling places after getting his vouching questions answered by election workers. From the looks of his video, he didn’t ask for or receive a ballot but instead left the precinct, telling poll workers he was going to retrieve his friends waiting outside.
While O’Keefe exposed our perfectly legal vouching process to the rest of the country, the real problem is that vouched-for voters and all other voters who register on election day are verified AFTER their votes are counted, weeks after the election. That’s because Minnesota is the only state in U.S. with same day voter registration and no provisional balloting. In other states, the ballots of those who register on election day are set aside as “provisional” until their identity and residency can be verified. Their votes are only counted once the verification is completed. In Minnesota, if you register and vote on election day and your information can’t be verified, we flag your name in the database so you can’t vote in the next election. But we can’t go back and retrieve your ballot — it’s already counted.
Secretary of State Steve Simon called O’Keefe’s undercover video “outrageous” and quickly released a statement:
“During Minnesota’s Primary on August 11, 2026, members of a widely discredited Florida-based political group visited several polling places in Minneapolis impersonating Minnesota voters. Dressed in what they called ‘Muslim’ costumes, and imitating foreign accents, they falsely claimed to be registered Minnesota voters. The group used concealed cameras to record their interactions with poll workers, releasing a heavily edited video of their encounters. Their apparent goal was to cast doubt on one or more Minnesota election laws that have been in force for over fifty years. Instead, they revealed their ignorance of how those laws actually work – while putting themselves in legal jeopardy.”
Simon’s statement exposes his defensiveness about our weak election laws, especially as they relate to election day registration. He begins by calling O’Keefe a “widely discredited Florida-based political group.” This was the same tactic used quite successfully when O’Keefe exposed the ballot harvesting operation in 2020. Instead of reporting on what we could all see in the videos (a guy bragging about delivering 200 ballots to Hennepin County), the local media used their collective might to discredit the messenger, O’Keefe. Simon is trying the same tactic again.
He then criticized O’Keefe for “casting doubt on one or more Minnesota election laws that have been in force for over fifty years.” O’Keefe’s videos absolutely cast doubt on the practice of vouching without provisional ballots. And there was no ignorance of how the laws work. The videos exposed exactly how the law works. Simon ends with the threat that the undercover journalists are now in legal jeopardy.
The local media dutifully covered the story from Simon’s perspective. KSTP wrote that vouching “is most often utilized by senior citizens who have not updated their address.” There is no evidence to back up this statement. In fact, Secretary Simon does not release data on who is participating in election day vouching in Minnesota.
State officials and their allies in the media embarrassed themselves trying to discredit Nick Shirley for exposing the Learing Center in Minneapolis. They’re doing it again with the latest video from James O’Keefe.
