PolitiFact, another popular fact checking organization, also
published a misleading analysis of this issue. This pertains to the number of non-citizens who are registered to vote, which is another finding from the 2014
Electoral Studies paper. PolitiFact
says that “Trump accurately cites the study” but is still wrong, because the study was “rebutted multiple times for the methodology it uses.”
PolitiFact then gives the distinct impression that the people who conducted the study are nobodies who merely wrote an article for the “Monkey Cage” blog of the Washington Post. PolitiFact does this by failing to mention that the study was published in a peer-reviewedacademic journal and by failing to cite any credentials of the study or its authors, even though two of them, Jesse Richman and David Earnest, are university professors.
In stark contrast, PolitiFact touts the study’s critics with phrases like “three experts,” “peer-reviewed article,” “a political science professor,” “an election expert,” “an associate policy analyst,” and “experts who actually gathered the underlying data.”
PolitiFact’s analysis provides no indication that anyone in this organization read the body of the original paper, read the authors’ replies to their critics, or judiciously examined any of the attacks on the paper. It simply portrays the authors as unaccomplished and their critics as reliable.
This appeal to authority is especially deceitful given that two of the three “experts who actually gathered the underlying data” have made donations to left-leaning political causes. These are
Brian Schaffner and
Samantha Luks, who are among the three scholars who wrote the 2015 paper in
Electoral Studies that criticized the original paper.
In 2004, Schaffner
donated to America Coming Together, a
liberal organization “heavily funded by billionaire George Soros” that was “on the cutting edge of national politics.” In 2016, Schaffner
gave $250 to Hillary Clinton, and Luks
donated to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Incidentally, the same federal records show no political donations for
the three authors of the original study.
In sum,
PolitiFact neglects the actual facts of this complex issue and makes it seem as if this is a case of “the experts” versus people with no credibility. That is not fact-checking but shilling for a particular point of view.
Conclusion
Contrary to the claims of certain major media outlets and fact checkers, a comprehensive analysis of this issue shows that substantial numbers of non-citizens vote illegally in U.S. elections. 
