James O’Keefe Recruits Election Workers to Secretly Record at the Polls

James O’Keefe, the conservative influencer who founded and formerly led Project Veritas, has assembled a corps of election workers and poll monitors planning to secretly film voting and ballot counting in states across the country.

The group intends to use hidden cameras to record and then publicize video to support their claims of fraud or other irregularities at voting sites, according to records shared with The New York Times by a former employee involved in planning. Nearly 70 people had signed up for the effort by mid-October, including people claiming to be election judges and volunteer poll watchers, the documents show.

Mr. O’Keefe’s project is one of several conservative groups that have been mobilizing to try to document fraud and corruption at the polls. In many cases, the activists involved are convinced of former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims about a rigged election in 2020 and are on the lookout for a repeat. Mr. Trump has already declared that Pennsylvania election officials are “cheating.”

The efforts worry election officials, who say that election workers who come to the job steeped in misinformation and hunting for misdeeds might interfere with the process. Last month, intelligence officials issued a warning about what they consider to be “insider threats” that could “derail or jeopardize a fair and transparent election process.”

Many states prohibit filming at election sites, and have laws protecting voter privacy and barring election interference. Mr. O’Keefe acknowledged the legal risk on social media last week, writing that in some cases it is illegal for the activists in the field to record, but “it is legal for me to publish what you send me so long as I ‘play no part’ in the recording.”

In response to questions from The New York Times, Mr. O’Keefe posted a video on social media calling his project “fully legal,” saying that had told his volunteers to follow the law and not to interfere with the elections.