The Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project has in recent months highlighted the Biden-Harris administration and the threat of illegal immigration to interfere in the election, which has clearly worried some in the establishment.
Over the weekend, the New York Times
Report It characterized concerns about interference by foreign groups as a “false but snowballing theory” and argued that “there is no evidence in Georgia, or indeed anywhere else in the country, to support Heritage's findings.”
The Oversight Project fought back, asserting that the threat is real, that “the system is designed to be abused,” and reiterating that the Times now “protects the rights of non-U.S. citizens to participate in elections.”
“I think their outrage and their defense of foreigners being able to vote tells Americans everything they need to know, and probably everything they already know,” Mike Howell, executive director of the Oversight Project, told The Blaze News.
Howell told The Blaze News that the Times' attack article was not only hollow, but also see-through.
Tweeted “If we're going to be committed opposition journalists, we've got to try harder. This has been too easy,” he told Ken Bensinger, who wrote the Times piece.
“The system has been abused and it will be difficult to judge the outcome of the 2024 election.”
A Times spokesperson told The Blaze News in a statement, “This is independent journalism with thorough, in-depth reporting based on independent reporting and pursuit of facts amid an obviously politicized agenda. The Times stands by our reporting.”
When reached for comment, Mike Hassinger, elections spokesman for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), defended some of the claims made in the Times report and called the surveillance project a “complete fabrication.”
background
Monitoring Project
Problematic footage revealed This summer, Anthony Rubin's Muckraker reported that a small number of foreign residents at the Elliot Norcross apartment complex in Norcross, Georgia, had admitted to registering to vote, some even demonstrating on camera that they had registered at work. At least one person said they had already voted.
The results were comparable to those of a separate monitoring project conducted in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Rubin said 14 percent of Norcross respondents said they were registered, and the Oversight Project was unable to find these foreigners on Georgia's voter rolls, suggesting that “shoddy address history records” and false documentation may be to blame.
He noted that Georgia has an estimated 339,000 foreign nationals living there, which appears to be a reference to the Migration Policy Institute's 2019 “illegal immigrant population.”
estimate Based on U.S. Census Bureau data, the Oversight Project suggested that “if that 14 percent rate holds true statewide, that would mean more than 47,000 noncitizens are registered in the Peach State alone.”
Even if that number is halved, foreign participation could have a major impact on the November election – after all, President Donald Trump lost Georgia by less than one vote.
12,000 votes Last time.
“It will be difficult to judge the outcome of the 2024 election because the system has been abused and audits are nearly impossible to conduct in the short term.”
said Monitoring project.
The watchdog group's accusatory revelations caused a stir, especially after Elon Musk.Share The video, which she posted on August 1 with the caption “So uncomfortable!”, has since been viewed more than 52.8 million times.
Within hours, Raffensperger
Tweeted“The State of Georgia actively investigates specific allegations of voting fraud and welcomes and will investigate any individual or group that comes forward with specific, evidence-based allegations.”
NYT attack article
The New York Times
Published An article titled “Heritage Foundation spreads deceptive video about foreign voters” was published on Saturday.
According to Ken Bensinger and Richard Fausett, “right-wing think tanks are peddling voting misinformation into social media feeds.”
“We have foreign nationals admitting to being registered to vote in Georgia, in front of cameras.”
The Times called the video “misleading,” even though it acknowledged that the foreigner in the video had in fact spoken to someone connected to the surveillance project and explicitly said he was registering to vote on camera.
The Times also argued that Oversight Project's claims “don't hold up,” suggesting that despite the fact that the video showed the questioner speaking Spanish, “three of the seven people filmed by Heritage later said they had misspoken.”
One of the three women who reportedly retracted her earlier statements told The Times that she lied on the video because she feared deportation. One undocumented immigrant, who called herself Marta, claimed she “just wanted them to leave.”
In an attempt to discredit the video, which contains a rehash of false and worn Democratic talking points about Project 2025, the Times also reported that state investigators “found no evidence that any of the seven people shown in the video were registered to vote,” but later in the article acknowledged that Raffensperger's investigation of Heritage's claims is still ongoing.
The Times' Benzinger and Fawcett made the confident claim a few days after the Justice Department's announcement.
Announced The court accused illegal immigrants in Alabama of “fake identities as United States citizens and using those identities to vote in multiple elections,” but said there was “no evidence to support Judge Heritage's findings in Georgia, a key battleground state with a large immigrant population, or indeed anywhere else in the country.”
They also cited research from the Brennan Center for Justice, a left-leaning advocacy group funded by George Soros's Open Society Institute and the Tides Foundation, to argue that foreigners cast “just one ten-thousandth of one percent” of votes in the 2016 election.
Rebuttal
The Oversight Project responded to the Times article in a thread on X.
Suggest That is tantamount to an “election lie.”
After pointing out that the article's title conflated foreigners who are registered to vote with foreign voters, the Oversight Project highlighted a retraction by one of the undocumented immigrants interviewed in the video.
“Ken [Bensinger] He gives credence to a foreigner named Marta who told the camera (1) that she is a foreigner and (2) that she is registered to vote.
Written “We allege she lied to us out of fear of deportation,” the watchdog said.
“It just doesn't make sense to me, because if you're so scared of being deported, would you admit to a crime on camera that is deportable? It's so counterintuitive, it's no laughing matter,” Howell told The Blaze News.
Howell also said those who retracted their statements may have done so after receiving guidance on how to speak from organisations such as Lead Stories, a left-leaning fact-checking group that had tracked them.
“It smelled like a cleanup,” Howell said. “We put our stuff out on video. Or [do you] Would you believe the word of other politicians who did not videotape their encounters?”
“People will fall through the cracks, and the cracks exist because they want to.”
The watchdog further suggested that of the seven people at X who admitted to being foreign nationals and registered to vote, four have yet to retract their statements.
“Ken, what about the other four?” the Surveillance Project asked.
The Oversight Project also took note of allegations in the New York Times that state investigators led by Raffensperger found no records showing that the people seen in the video had registered or voted.
“They said they didn't know and only checked the address records,” said the watchdog group, whose executive director seemed not entirely convinced that the Georgia Secretary of State's office was keen to “actually look into this.”
“Instead of just plainly saying, 'Zero of the seven are registered in Georgia,' they use the odd rhetorical device of saying, 'We've verified the registration at that address,'” Howell said.
So did we.We told them so.”
“Just because you're currently at an address doesn't mean you're registered there. In fact, as we've conducted investigations across the country, several people have testified that they were registered at their workplace,” Howell continued. “Just checking people at their current address is not enough to prove they're not registered at all.”
While the watchdog noted other problems with the Times' reporting, they also highlighted how the reporters' word choice and framing revealed their ideological bias — for example, the Brennan Center for Justice was called a “policy group,” while the Times called the Oversight Project a “right-wing think tank.”
Howell ultimately said, “The bottom line is that the New York Times is clearly working with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office to try to discredit this video. But this video hasn't been discredited at all. We have foreign nationals admitting to registering to vote in front of a camera in Georgia.”
When reached for comment, Hassinger told The Blaze News, “The fundraiser created by Project Oversight and funded by Heritage was not just disinformation, it was a complete fabrication. Authorities learned it was fabricated by checking voter registrations at the apartment complex and by sending investigators to speak with people who appeared in the video.”
“Our investigation revealed that none of the individuals seen in the video were registered to vote or voted,” Hassinger continued. “When asked, my office was unable to provide Oversight Project with any other evidence that the residents of these apartment complexes were A) in the country illegally or B) registered to vote.”
“While the Oversight Project may have legitimate concerns about illegal immigrants voting in Georgia, they have yet to express them seriously, instead choosing to lie in order to sow fear and distrust in Georgia's election process,” Hassinger added.
Asked whether President Joe Biden's Executive Order 14019, which effectively mobilizes the federal government to encourage people to vote Democratic, had anything to do with the possibility of illegal immigrants registering, Howell told The Blaze News, “The system is basically made easy for them. … The system is designed to be abused.”
Biden's Justice Department, various other federal agencies, and White House staff held a “hearing” on the implementation of this executive order on July 12, 2021. Howell noted the meeting, noting that open border advocates who participated in the discussion suggested that undocumented immigrants should be trusted to operate within the bounds of the law.
“This is all kind of high-level politics. They've created a very loose system and they don't want to police it. People will fall through the gaps and the gaps are there because they want them to,” Howell said.
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