Hello, I’m your lieutenant governor. Here’s how to cheat at the polls.

Proponents of a constitutional requirement that all North Carolina voters show a photo ID have a problem. They want voters to show that they are who they say they are, but they can’t show that voter fraud is what they say it is.

In-person voter fraud can’t be identified because it’s all but invisible. Auditors have fine-combed voting results and have found virtually no instances of voters impersonating someone else. That makes it hard to justify adding a photo ID requirement that could leave thousands of legitimate voters unable to vote.

But voter ID backers need not despair of finding a problem to fit their solution. North Carolina’s Lt. Gov. Dan Forest has a plan. It’s brilliant in a Dan Forest kind of way: If we can’t show any in-person voter fraud, let’s tell people how to make some.

Forest’s second term as the state’s second fiddle isn’t up until 2020, when he’s expected to run for governor. Nonetheless, he’s inserted himself in this November’s election with a video offering a step-by-step description of how to commit in-person voter fraud. In the opening of the video, he says he’s offering this tutorial, dubbed Voter Fraud 101, “just for fun.”

The video promoted on Facebook was paid for by the N.C. Republican Council of State Committee, a political action group headed by Forest, WRAL reported. The PAC is largely funded by Greg Lindberg, an investor from Durham whose business activities have drawn the scrutiny the U.S. attorney in Charlotte.

Using animated figures, the video shows how a group could engage in voter fraud by scraping public data from state voting records. The technique would involve compiling a list of who has not voted at the end of early voting and cutting that list for voters who have only voted once in the last four elections.

Make those two moves, Forest narrates, and presto! – “You now have a virgin list of eligible voters who have not yet voted and have a history of not showing up at the polls.”

Armed with that list, teams of fake voters would use the names and addresses to vote on Election Day. Should a real voter show up and find themselves listed as having voted, they would be given a provisional ballot until the confusion was sorted out, a ballot that may never be counted.

“It’s that simple, and all because North Carolina does not require a photo voter ID,” Forest says.

Actually, it’s not that simple. First, cutting that voting data to get that “virgin list” is not easy. It would require expertise. Second, voting in the name of another is a felony. Forest’s plan would require getting a sizable group of paid workers or volunteers to agree to committing multiple felonies. Even if they did, it would take thousands of fake votes to affect the outcome of all but the smallest elections.

While it’s hard to show a credible version of how fake votes can be cast in person, it would be easy to show how true votes would be denied by a photo ID. Tens of thousands of registered North Carolina voters don’t drive and therefore lack a driver’s license. Many of them don’t have passports or access to a birth certificate, documents they’ll need to get a valid state ID card.

The video ends with Forest’s name, an image of North Carolina and, in an apparent nod to Forest’s gubernatorial ambitions, a child reading a printed line — with one R removed — from the film Forrest Gump: “Run, Forest, Run.”

But this gubernatorial hopeful’s how-to-cheat video brings to mind a different line from the film, one spoken by Mr. Gump himself:

“Stupid is as stupid does.”

Barnett: 919-829-4512, nbarnett@newsobserver.com

This story was originally published October 26, 2018 at 11:16 AM.