The Anatomy of 3 Videos Alleging that Many Non-Citizens Are Registered to Vote in U.S. Elections
Rapid Research Note
Allegations of non-citizen voting have become one of the most prominent rumors this election period. In this “rapid research note,” we’ll discuss three videos that fueled this rumor and provide key context on this recurring election narrative.
Background
Non-citizen voting rumors are a persistent issue during U.S. elections, gaining traction this year with the heightened focus on border and immigration policy. While non-citizens occasionally receive voter registration forms by mistake, actual cases of non-citizens voting remain extremely rare.
Three videos from the Oversight Project, a Heritage Foundation initiative, spread rapidly on X (see Image 1). They feature interviews in NC, GA, and AZ, where residents are asked about voter registration. Through speculative extrapolation, the videos claim that 10% of non-citizens in NC and 14% in GA are registered to vote. Each cluster represents a new video dropped.
Video 1:
The first video in this series was posted by the Oversight Project on July 4, showing interviews in North Carolina. With 498.8k views, it was widely shared across X and other platforms like Telegram and Meta. It credited footage from @realmuckraker.
Video 2:
On July 31, a second video from Georgia was posted, hitting 56.1M views. It received a massive boost when Elon Musk shared it on August 1, resulting in it to be the most-watched video in the series.
Video 3:
The third video from Arizona was posted on September 26, amassing 641.2k views. Boosted by major accounts like "End Wokeness" (1.7M views) and Sheri™ (1M views), it quickly gained traction on X.
Fact-checks by LeadStories and the NY Times uncovered key issues with the videos: 1) The individuals in GA didn’t realize they were being interviewed and responded yes to questions to get the interviewers to leave; and 2) The claims of 14% non-citizen voting in GA and 10% in NC are based on unreliable data samples lacking scientific rigor; and 3) The Heritage Foundation later admitted they had no evidence these individuals were registered to vote. Georgia’s state investigators also found no proof that any of the seven people in the video had ever registered. Even the Georgia Secretary of State's office called it "a stunt."
In this case, as is common in rumoring, the fact checks received a fraction of the reach that the original videos did. The LeadStories and NY Times pieces only received 26.5K and 185K views on X, respectively.
Conclusion
We expect non-citizen voting rumors to persist throughout the election and certification process, becoming a central tenet of voter fraud allegations this cycle, despite the Heritage Foundation itself finding fewer than 100 cases between 2002 and 2023 years and recent research showing non-citizen voting is statistically negligible, likely close to zero.
Correction Note: On October 26, 2024, we updated this piece to reflect that the Heritage Foundation database for “ineligible voting” had 85 cases of non-citizen voters between 2002 and 2023, not 23 as the New York Times had reported.