Oversight Project punches back after NYT tries to downplay registration of illegal alien voters in Georgia

The Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project has in recent months highlighted the threat of election interference by both the Biden-Harris administration and illegal aliens. This has evidently made some establishmentarians uncomfortable.

Over the weekend, the New York Times published a report characterizing concerns about interference by groups of noncitizens as a "false, but snowballing, theory" — claiming "there is no evidence to support Heritage's findings in Georgia ... or, for that matter, anywhere else in the country."

The Oversight Project is punching back, reiterating that the threat is real, that "the system has been designed to be abused," and that the Times is now "protecting the ability of noncitizens to participate in American elections."

Mike Howell, executive director of the Oversight Project, told Blaze News, "The fact that they're upset and jumping to the defense of noncitizens being able to vote in elections, I think, tells Americans all they need to know and what they probably already know."

Howell, who explained to Blaze News how the Times' hit piece was as hollow as it was transparent, tweeted to the Times article's author, Ken Bensinger, "If you're going to be our dedicated oppo journalist you need to do better. This was too easy."

'Systems are being taken advantage of, and the outcome of the 2024 election will be difficult to determine.'

A spokesman for the Times told Blaze News in a statement, "This is a piece of thorough and deeply-reported independent journalism based on original reporting and pursuit of facts amid explicitly politicized agendas. The Times stands behind our reporting."

When pressed for comment, Mike Hassinger, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's (R) elections public information officer, defended a number of claims made in the Times report and accused the Oversight Project of "an out-and-out fabrication."

Background

The Oversight Project published troubling footage in conjunction with Anthony Rubin's Muckraker earlier this summer that showed a handful of noncitizens at the apartment complex Elliot Norcross in Norcross, Georgia, admitting they were registered to vote. Some indicated on camera that they were registered at work. At least one indicated she had already voted.

The results were comparable to those in another Oversight Project investigation conducted in Charlotte, North Carolina.

According to Rubin, 14% of the respondents in Norcross said they had been registered. The Oversight Project was unable to locate these noncitizens on Georgia voter rolls, indicating that "shoddy address history records" and fake documents might be to blame.

Noting that there are an estimated 339,000 noncitizens living in Georgia — an apparent reference to Migration Policy Institute's 2019 "unauthorized population" estimate on the basis of U.S. Census Bureau data — the Oversight Project suggested that "if the 14% proportion holds true state wide, this would equate to over 47,000 registered non-citizens" in the Peach State alone.

Even with that projected number halved, a noncitizen cohort participating in the election could prove hugely consequential in November. After all, President Donald Trump lost Georgia by under 12,000 votes the last time around.

"Systems are being taken advantage of, and the outcome of the 2024 election will be difficult to determine given the near impossibility of auditing in a short period of time," said the Oversight Project.

The watchdog's damning exposé created waves, especially after Elon Muskshared the video on Aug. 1 with the caption, "Extremely disturbing!" — a post that netted over 52.8 million impressions since.

Within hours, Raffensperger tweeted, "The state of Georgia aggressively investigates specific claims of voter fraud and we welcome any individual or group to submit specific, evidence based claims, and we will investigate."

The NYT hit piece

The New York Times published an article Saturday titled "Heritage Foundation Spreads Deceptive Videos About Noncitizen Voters."

According to Ken Bensinger and Richard Fausset, "The right-wing think tank has been pushing misinformation about voting into social media feeds."

'We have noncitizens in Georgia on camera admitting to being registered to vote.'

Despite acknowledging that noncitizens did in fact speak to persons linked to the Oversight Project in the video and that they had said plainly on camera they were registered to vote, the Times labeled the video as "misleading."

The Times further claimed that the Oversight Project's claims "do not hold up," suggesting that "three of the seven people Heritage filmed later said they had misspoken," even though they had conversed with the questioners in the video in Spanish.

One of the three women who allegedly recanted their earlier statements told the Times she lied in the video for fear of being deported. The woman, an illegal alien who referred to herself as Marta, claimed she "just wanted them to go away."

In its attempt to discredit the video, which included a rehash of the false and well-worn Democratic talking point about Project 2025, the Times also said state investigators "found no evidence that any of the seven people on the tape had ever registered to vote," despite admitting deeper in the piece that Raffensperger's investigation into Heritage's claims was still ongoing.

The Times' Bensinger and Fausset confidently asserted days after the DOJ announced it had charged an illegal alien in Alabama "in connection with her fraudulent assumption of a United States citizen's identity and her use of that identity to vote in multiple elections," that "there is no evidence to support Heritage’s findings in Georgia, a critical swing state with a large immigrant population, or, for that matter, anywhere else in the country."

They proceeded to cite the findings of the Brennan Center for Justice — a leftist advocacy organization that has received funding from George Soros' Open Society Institute and the Tides Foundation — that supposedly only "one-ten thousandth of 1 percent of votes in the 2016 election were cast by noncitizens."

Rebuttals

The Oversight Project responded to the Times article with a thread on X, suggesting it amounted to an "election lie."

After noting that the article's title conflated noncitizens who were registered to vote with noncitizen voters, Oversight Project zeroed in on the retraction by one of the illegal immigrants interviewed in the video.

"Ken [Bensinger] stakes his credibility on a noncitizen named Marta who told us on camera that she was (1) a noncitizen and (2) registered to vote," wrote the watchdog group. "He claims she lied to us because she was afraid of being deported."

Howell told Blaze News that made "zero sense because if you're afraid of being deported, why would you admit to a deportable offense on camera? It's so counterintuitive, it doesn't pass the laugh test."

Howell also raised the possibility that those who retracted their statements may have done so after being coached on what to say by Lead Stories, the left-leaning fact-checking group that tracked them down, or others.

"That reeked of a cleanup effort," said Howell. "We put our stuff out on video. Or [do you] take the word of these other political actors who did not videotape their encounter?"

'People are going to get through the cracks and the cracks are there because they want them to.'

The watchdog group further indicated on X that of the seven individuals who admitted to being both noncitizens and registered to vote, four had yet to walk back their statements.

"What about the other four, Ken?" asked the Oversight Project.

The Oversight Project also seized upon the Times' claim that state investigators under Raffensperger had found no records to indicate the people in the video had registered or voted.

"They said they don't know and only checked the records from that address," said the watchdog group, whose executive director does not appear entirely convinced the Georgia secretary of state's office is altogether eager in "actually investigating this."

"Instead of them saying outright, 'Zero of the seven people are registered in the state of Georgia,' they played a weird rhetorical game where they say, 'We checked the registrations at that address,'" said Howell. "OK, so did we. That's what we told them."

"Just because they're at that address now does not mean that they are registered there. In fact, over the course of our investigations nationwide, several people have indicated that they're registered at work," continued Howell. "Just checking people out at their current address is insufficient to prove that they are not registered at all."

While the watchdog group highlighted other issues with the Times report, it emphasized that the reporters' word choice and framing gave them away as biased ideologues. For instance, whereas the Brennan Center for Justice was referred to as a "policy group," the Times referred to the Oversight Project as a "right wing think tank."

Ultimately, Howell said that the "short of it is the New York Times is clearly working with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office in an effort to discredit the video, which hasn't been discredited in the least. We have noncitizens in Georgia on camera admitting to being registered to vote."

When pressed for comment, Hassinger told Blaze News, "The fundraising stunt created by Project Oversight and funded by Heritage was more than disinformation, it was an out-and-out fabrication. Our office learned that it was fabricated by verifying voter registrations at the apartment complex, and by sending investigators to speak to the people featured in the video."

"Our investigation revealed that no one in the video was registered to vote, nor had they voted," continued Hassinger. "When this office asked The Oversight Project for any other evidence that these apartment residents were A) in the country illegally or B) registered to vote, they couldn't provide anything."

"The Oversight Project may have valid concerns about illegal aliens voting in Georgia, but they have yet to express them in any serious way and have chosen instead to tell lies in order to create fear and distrust in Georgia’s election processes," added Hassinger.

When asked whether President Joe Biden's Executive Order 14019, which effectively mobilizes the federal government to turn out votes for Democrats, is connected to the potential registration of illegal aliens, Howell told Blaze News, "The system basically makes it easy for them. ... The system has been designed to be abused."

The Biden Department of Justice, various other federal agencies, and White House staff held a "Listening Session" on July 12, 2021, regarding the order's implementation. Referencing the session, Howell noted that champions of open borders engaged in the discussions suggested illegal aliens should be trusted to operate within the bounds of the law.

"This is kind of the high-level politics of it all. They want to create such a loose system and have no checks on it. People are going to get through the cracks, and the cracks are there because they want them to," said Howell.

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