Fake Journalist Nick Shirley Recycles A Debunked 'Voter Fraud' Narrative
A new video by MAGA provocateur Nick Shirley purports to expose voter fraud in California, but in fact it’s little more than a repackaging of false narratives spread over a decade ago by right-wing operative James O'Keefe. In both cases, the right-wing influencers suggest that fraud could exist without actually exposing any, relying on innuendo and hypotheticals rather than evidence.
O’Keefe created the template for undercover videos meant to expose and embarrass liberal organizations and causes. His old videos, like Shirley’s new ones, were frequently debunked in real time, but they nevertheless served a role in providing fuel to conservative content creators hungry to stoke outrage about perceived liberal excesses. Shirley’s repackaging shouldn’t be surprising given the incentives for young, MAGA-aligned influencers to make a name for themselves in a crowded field. But the original claims didn't provoke any policy changes — reasonably so, given that they were bogus — so Shirley's repackaging has little to offer beyond a hope that new consumers take the bait.
Shirley gained prominence in recent months following a so-called investigation into fraud in Minneapolis day care centers. Although there were some real instances of fraud within the city’s social services, local news and prosecutors had already exposed and investigated many instances of wrong-doing. Still, The New York Times referred to Shirley as having “spurred the federal crackdown on Minneapolis.”
Once the right-wing’s most identifiable creator of sting-style — often deliberately misleading — exposés, O’Keefe’s star has since somewhat fallen. In 2010, O’Keefe founded Project Veritas, and over more than a decade the organization produced videos meant to discredit perceived liberal organizations, often through tactics such as manipulation and deceptive editing. According to Rolling Stone, in 2023 O’Keefe “either left or was pushed out of his own company … depending on whom you ask.” He has since tried to reestablish himself in the right-wing media ecosystem, including by creating an award in 2025 for the so-called citizen journalists who have followed in his footsteps. The first recipient was Nick Shirley.
Shirley, like O’Keefe, is promoting the possibility of fraud that he hasn't actually found
Shirley’s video is one of many from right-wing influencers, such as Benny Johnson, decrying supposedly rampant voter fraud in California, and it includes many examples and myths that have already been debunked. One of the most prominent narratives in Shirley’s video, which was already debunked when Johnson spread it, is that voters whose registrations list central locations, like an abandoned building, as an address are a clear sign of fraud. However, as Democracy Docket notes, California law “gives people experiencing homelessness the flexibility to use any location to register to vote. As long as unhoused residents can describe the place where they spend most of their time — whether it’s an address, a cross street, or a vacant lot — they can legally list it as their address on their voter registration form.”
Another one of Shirley's key examples of “fraud” in the video is a previously reported story about a woman who registered her dog to vote and cast two ballots for him in 2021 and 2022, only one of which was counted. The woman, a registered Republican, self-reported her crimes and is facing six years in prison.
The premise of Shirley’s 20-minute video is that there could be fraud in California without stricter voter ID laws and “with the state receiving millions of illegal migrants, the opportunities for fraud now are even higher.” California does require a valid ID or Social Security number when registering to vote or when voting for the first time after registering by mail, and extensive research has shown that noncitizen voting in U.S. elections is exceedingly rare and extremely unlikely to impact elections. Yet Shirley’s video has been picked up by others in right-wing media, including livestreamer Tim Pool, former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, and conspiracy theory website The Gateway Pundit.
Had someone just awoken from a decade-long coma, they might find these types of claims quite familiar. In 2012, O’Keefe attempted to show how easy it was to commit voter fraud in a state without strict voter ID laws via a video titled “Dead people receive ballots in NH primary,” which claims that conspirators could use the names of the deceased to cast fraudulent ballots to steal an election. But, as Media Matters noted at the time, the video “actually demonstrates just how difficult it would be to pull off such a plot.”
Although it’s true that making sure ballot rolls are accurate is important, O’Keefe’s stunt only showed that without knowing how many votes were needed, the conspirators would need to engage in a massive plot and subsequent cover-up to make sure they had covered the spread. It would be an enormous undertaking. O’Keefe provided no evidence that such a scheme existed for the simple reason that there was no such plot.
In another one of O’Keefe’s “gotcha” videos on voter fraud, a Project Veritas employee almost obtains a ballot meant for registered voter Eric Holder, then the U.S. attorney general. Project Veritas marketed the video as a slam dunk, claiming it had “proven” fraud occurred while in reality no vote was cast and no fraud occurred. The manufactured stunt, like Shirley’s escapades in California, was another senseless attempt to rally people behind more restrictive voter ID laws.
Though Shirley’s claims about California include some different details from O’Keefe and Project Veritas’ claims, the gist is the same: Both attempt to prove “voter fraud” and fail to show any actual fraud being committed. Such right-wing misinformation has been debunked for years while the truth is still that fraud is just not happening at the scale they claim.
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters
