Brian Dickerson

Detroit Free Press Columnist

James O’Keefe is a professional liar.

He just isn’t very good at it.

For the last four years, O’Keefe has been on a crusade to convince Americans that voter fraud poses a mortal threat to their democracy.

This week, the 32-year old conservative activist brought his social media circus to Southeast Michigan, where, in a whirlwind day of political theater, he and a female associate attempted to obtain primary ballots while posing consecutively as Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, Wayne State University Law School Dean Jocelyn Benson, and three members of the Free Press editorial board, including yours truly.

I wish I could muster some righteous indignation over this outrage. But the thing is, O'Keefe didn't get very far.

And as it turns out, he never does.

Still, in a YouTube posting a few hours later, the millennial reprobate boasted that he had come this close to passing himself off as a newspaper columnist who is 1) old enough to be his father and 2) a helluva a lot better looking (or, at the very least, somewhat better-groomed.)

O’Keefe also claimed that a video in which he surreptitiously documented his ruse demonstrated the need for stricter voter identification laws.

Except that he didn’t, and it doesn’t.

Wrong precinct, wrong town

The video, which you can watch here, shows O’Keefe approaching Cindy Rose, a veteran poll worker at the Birmingham elementary school where I typically cast my ballot, about 9 a.m. on Election Day.

Rose and I know each other pretty well. I see her every time I vote, and far more frequently in the nearby park where I walk my dog.

And it’s not just me; Rose has been a volunteer in my precinct for nine years running, and she recognizes most of the voters she encounters every Election Day.

(Lesson 1: If you’re looking to commit voter fraud, do it someplace other than Mayberry.)

So when O’Keefe introduced himself to Rose as Brian Dickerson, gave her my address, and identified himself as a newcomer to the neighborhood, she was, let us say, on heightened alert.

“Are you his son?” she asks on O'Keefe's video.

“No,” he replies. “I’m Brian.”

The smoking gun

This might be a good time to review the language of Michigan statute 168.932, which states, among other things:

A person who does any of the following is guilty of a felony punishable by imprisonment for not more than 4 years or a fine of not more than $2,000.00, or both:

(a) A person shall not, at an election, falsely impersonate another person, or vote or attempt to vote under the name of another person . . .

Now, back to the video:

When O’Keefe explains that he recently lost his driver’s license on a hunting trip "up in the North" and asks if there is any other way he can establish his bona fides and cast a vote, Rose tells him (correctly) that state law permits forgetful voters such as himself to cast a provisional vote by signing an affidavit in which they swear, under penalty of perjury, that they are who they claim to be.

O’Keefe asks for and obtains a blank affidavit. But he declines to sign it. Which is smart, because by this time Rose has called the Birmingham city clerk’s office, where another acquaintance of mine, Deputy Clerk Cheryl Arft, informs her that she accepted an absentee ballot from the real Brian Dickerson a day earlier.

In the video, Rose chooses not to share this intelligence with the intrepid impostor, curious to see how far he will press his scheme.

A fraud aborted

But instead of forging the affidavit — a felony punishable by imprisonment — O’Keefe aborts and heads to Birmingham City Hall, where he confronts City Clerk Laura Pierce (on camera, of course) with the somewhat exaggerated claim that one of her volunteer poll workers has just offered him my ballot in return for a forged signature.

Then he posts the video of his conversations with Rose and Pierce on YouTube, tweeting: “I could have voted as Brian Dickerson!” The video is dutifully broadcast by the Drudge Report and other conservative websites, doubtless mystifying the vast majority of right-wing conspiracy theorists who have never heard of me.

And of course, O’Keefe could have voted as Brian Dickerson, in the same sense that he could walk into a Ford dealership (with no identification whatsoever) and steal a new Taurus.

What’s dubious is his assertion that the crime would have gone unnoticed or unpunished.

Even if O'Keefe had followed through by signing a fraudulent affidavit, the poll workers knew that the person in whose name he sought to vote had already cast a ballot.

And if I had attempted to vote after O'Keefe's had fraudulently pre-empted me?

"We would have asked you for identification," Pierce says, "and, after establishing that you were who you said you were, we would have called the police."

O’Keefe’s premise is that he could have easily stolen my vote by signing my name. But he could more easily have ended up in handcuffs.

And although he and others have been advocating for tougher voter I.D. laws for years on the grounds that fraud is rampant, none has identified a single instance in which a U.S. election turned on counterfeit votes.

Birmingham police opened an investigation (on their own initiative) on the theory that O’Keefe might have committed a crime simply by making an oral representation that he was me, although the Oakland County Prosecutor's Office seemed to have concluded, as this column went to press, that it had bigger fish to fry. And what sane person could argue?

Demagogues vs. democracy

But by now you must be wondering, as I did: Why me?

I mean, Mike Duggan is the mayor of Detroit. Benson is a law school dean who has argued that the stricter voter identification laws O’Keefe and his alarmist confederates want to enact are really designed to discourage minority voters from exercising their rights.

All my Free Press colleagues Stephen Henderson and Nancy Kaffer and I have done is argue, in our respective columns, that the millions of Americans who don’t vote pose a greater threat to democracy than miscreants like O’Keefe do.

I still believe that. Our democracy is stronger when we make it easier for everybody to vote, not harder for those who find it difficult to stand in line on Election Day or too expensive to obtain a driver’s license.

It's hardly news that the world abounds with liars and con artists. There's even one running for president.

But I’d rather trust the judgment of people like Cindy Rose than surrender to the paranoia of provocateurs like James O’Keefe.

And if someone wants me to sign an affidavit testifying to all of the above, I will.

Contact Brian Dickerson: bdickerson@freepress.com.