VICTOR JOECKS: Project Veritas’ videos reveal widespread mail ballot fraud

On Sunday, Project Veritas released undercover videos appearing to show an illegal ballot harvesting operation in Minnesota’s Somali community. In one video, political operative Liban Mohamed brags about the number of absentee ballots sitting on the dash of his car.

“Numbers don’t lie,” Mohamed said in a Snapchat video he posted in early July, according to Project Veritas. “You can see my car is full. All these here are absentees’ ballots. Can’t you see? Look at all these. My car is full. All these are for Jamal Osman … We got 300 today for Jamal Osman only.”

Osman was running for Minneapolis City Council and is Mohamed’s brother. Under Minnesota law, it’s illegal to turn in more than three ballots for other people. That’s not all. According to a Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party worker known as Jamal, at least some of those ballots “were not filled. They were blank.”

This is bigger than a city council race. Omar Jamal, the chairman of the Somali Watchdog Group, said absentee ballot fraud and vote buying is widespread in that community. He also implicates Rep. Ilhan Omar in this scheme.

“It’s an open secret,” he said. Rep. Omar “will do anything that she can do to get elected, and she has hundreds of people on the streets doing that.”

In a conversation with a ballot harvester, a Project Veritas journalist asked, “Who was the one filling out the absentee ballots?”

“The ones who work for the campaign (of Rep. Omar) and they send them for us, too,” he said. He also described how Rep. Omar’s canvassers filled out absentee ballot requests for people and then told those voters that the canvassers will “fill it out and send it. You stay home and you will not go to the” polling place.

He added, “When we sign the voting document and they fill it out is when they give us the money.”

On Monday night, Project Veritas released another video. It showed a ballot harvester telling a man how to fill out an absentee ballot request. He then gives the voter $200 in “pocket change.” The voter said, “OK, when I fill it out, I’ll bring it to you.” In a separate audio tape, another man said, “I was given money so I could vote.”

Jamal, the DFL worker, contended this scheme had another facet. Some ballot harvesters work in polling places. They pretended to be translators for voters in order to accompany them to the voting booth and tell them whom to vote for, he said.

Omar’s office has denied any wrongdoing, but the Minneapolis police are now investigating. It won’t be surprising if Project Veritas releases more videos, too.

This is hardly the first evidence that mail ballots are ripe for fraud. In August, a New Jersey judge ordered a new election after prosecutors charged a city councilman and his associates with mail ballot fraud. In August, a Democrat operative told the New York Post that he rigged elections in New Jersey for decades using mail ballots. He also said he trained at least 20 other campaign staffers who now work in several states, including Pennsylvania. The Heritage Foundation has cataloged hundreds of cases of absentee ballot fraud or vote buying.

The left’s typical response is to dismiss these as isolated incidents. But people who commit felonies that can land them in jail don’t acknowledge their crimes after winning elections.

As these Project Veritas videos show, mail ballots are especially vulnerable to fraud, intimidation and vote buying. Pretending otherwise requires believing Democrat talking points over what you can see with your own eyes.

Contact Victor Joecks at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698.