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Hangin' With James O'Keefe — Or One Of His Henchmen — In Winooski

By Paul Heintz @paulheintz

As Sam Hemingway is reporting over at the Free Press, notorious conservative provocateur James O’Keefe has released a video documenting how trusting — I mean porous — Vermont’s voter identification laws are.

Using hidden cameras, the video shows a series of exchanges between individuals successfully obtaining ballots at Chittenden County voting places without showing identification. It contrasts those with scenes in which a bartender at the Vermont Pub and Brewery and a motel employee refuse to provide services to customers who fail to show ID.

“If people walked in to vote in the Vermont presidential primary and said the names of both living and dead people, could these people be offered ballots to vote for president without showing any valid identification?” the narrator asks.

Oddly, I was actually present for one of the exchanges documented in the video, which is part of O’Keefe’s “Project Veritas investigates voter fraud in America” series. It was somewhere around 11 a.m. on Town Meeting Day and I was dropping by my polling place at the Winooski Senior Citizens Center before stumbling in to work.

As I waited in line to vote, the man in front of me engaged in a weird back-and-forth with a poll worker. Still half asleep, I only tuned in to the conversation about halfway through, as the voter/videographer got all hot and bothered because the clerk didn’t want to see his ID.

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Tags: News, blurt, Video

        
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About The Author

Paul Heintz

paul@sevendaysvt.com

@paulheintz

Bio:
Paul Heintz is a staff writer and political editor for Seven Days. He wrote the "Fair Game" political column from May 2012 through December 2016.