Videographer says he caught illegal activity at polls

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A firestorm is erupting over several videos taken at Charlotte polling sites. A national videographer claims the videos show campaign workers breaking the law by encouraging undocumented immigrants to vote.

One video shows a worker with Project Veritas talking to Greg Amick, former campaign manager for sheriff candidate Irwin Carmichael. A woman who said she was registered to vote, but claimed to be undocumented, asked him if she was allowed to vote.

Carmichael said undocumented immigrants should not be voting. He said Amick made that clear to the woman who approached him.

"That's edited out where he says, 'You need to go inside and talk to the board of elections,'" said Carmichael.

He said the video is misleading, but James O'Keefe, founder of the nonprofit, said North Carolina election officials should take it seriously.

"Now that they have the information they can make the decision, decide on their own whether these are people should be prosecuted or they're just ignorant," he said.

O'Keefe said a recent study published in the Washington Post spurred his investigation. The study suggested undocumented immigrants who voted in North Carolina in 2008 may have caused President Barack Obama to win the state.

State Rep. Carla Cunningham said O'Keefe should be investigated. The Democrat said actors from Project Veritas targeted her campaign workers. She said they tried to trick her into committing a crime.

"He told her he had an envelope he wanted to give her, and it had names of people with dementia and he wanted me to get it to help these people vote," said Cunningham.

The envelope contained a jump drive. She said she never looked at it, but planned to turn it over to state election officials.

"It makes me feel that people will go to any length to get the results that they want," she said.

O'Keefe said Friday that he doesn't know anything about that jump drive.

Michael Dickerson, who is the Board of Elections chairman in Mecklenburg County, said people seen in that video work for individual campaigns. He said they are not election workers and are not in charge of instructing voters. For that reason his office is not investigating.

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