The North Carolina State Board of Elections has opened an investigation into the allegation of voter fraud from the North Carolina Republican Party in the wake of an activist video purporting to show campaign workers assisting an illegal immigrant to vote. “We have folks who are investigating it. We actually have one of our people going down to Charlotte today to look into this matter more fully,” Josh Lawson, a State Board of Elections spokesman, said in an interview Friday with Breitbart News.
He added that the SBOE has also requested that creators of the video — conservative activist James O’Keefe’s Project Vertias — provide the full, unedited video of the interactions.
It is illegal to vote as a non-citizen. It is also illegal to assist non- citizens to vote.
Thursday, Project Veritas released a new video showing campaign workers in North Carolina appearing to assist an individual posing as an illegal immigrant from Brazil vote in the midterm elections.
The same day the North Carolina GOP called on the SBOE to investigate the matter. The investigation comes days after the SBOE released the results of an audit dealing with suspected non-citizens on the voting rolls.
According to Lawson of the 1,425 suspected non-citizens on the voting rolls, so far about 20 have already casts early or absentee ballots.
“These are folks that based on the database comparisons from Homeland Security and from the DMV showed up as non-citizens, but they have not had a hearing yet,” he explained, “so it is not like I could say to you definitively non-citizens are voting.”
He noted that of the 1,425 suspected non-citizens flagged on the voting rolls, some 226 had voted before.
“We’re looking today to finalize a guidance to the counties regarding a challenge procedure in the event that an individual flagged by the citizenship audit shows up to the polls. So we’re hoping to get that out to the counties later this afternoon,” Lawson said.
He added that the process will be unique in that it will provide an avenue to challenge a potential voter’s citizenship at the polls and stressed the seriousness with which the SBOE takes potential fraud.
“We take it very seriously because of course one vote by somebody who is not qualified to vote is one too many,” he said.
