Conservative activist James O'Keefe carried out an undercover stunt at an Alaska polling place, falsely identifying himself as the brother of Senator Lisa Murkowski and filming himself receiving a ballot without presenting the required identification — an attempt to demonstrate what he framed as a vulnerability in the state's election system.

O'Keefe, a pro-Trump provocateur best known for operations designed to trick government officials or members of liberal organizations into embarrassing or compromising positions, posted the video on X and later emailed Murkowski's Senate office to describe what he had done.

The backdrop: Murkowski has drawn outrage from MAGA activists over her refusal to back President Donald Trump's SAVE America Act, a package of voting restrictions that Murkowski has said would cost some rural Alaskans thousands of dollars to comply with.

A staffer in Murkowski's office replied: "I appreciate your acknowledgement that a member of your organization actively engaged in voter fraud by impersonating me at a polling place in Alaska. If you could please relay the individual's name, I will happily include it in my complaint to the Division of Elections and the Department of Law."

Stephen Richer, the former elections clerk of Maricopa County, Arizona — and a Republican himself — then dismantled the stunt point by point on X, calling O'Keefe "a liar and a bad person" and arguing that Alaska's poll workers had, in fact, followed the law.

"When O'Keefe, impersonating a registered voter, asked to vote, the poll workers repeatedly asked for his identification. He said he didn't have identification and asked if he could still vote. The poll workers told him yes, he could vote, but it must be a 'questioned ballot' that goes into a security envelope," Richer wrote.

That ballot, known as a "provisional ballot" in most other states, is not counted unless the voter subsequently provides identification at a local government office, a safeguard meant to let eligible voters proceed while still preserving election checks.

"O'Keefe did not expose an opportunity fraud. He did not expose unlawful conduct by election administrators. He did, however, record some seemingly sweet, civically-minded older Americans working the election site who tried to help him with his alleged issue," Richer wrote.

Beyond putting those poll workers in danger by recording them, Richer continued, O'Keefe may have broken the law himself, having entered a polling place unauthorized and attempted to impersonate a voter.

Richer concluded: "nothing O'Keefe did in the video would be changed as a result of the SAVE America Act. Nothing."