Ballot fraud allegations reveal the partisan nature of truth in modern America

Like professional wrestling and reality TV political dirty tricks are a grand American tradition that seem to be still going strong. On 27 September the American right-wing activist group Project Veritas published a video on YouTube containing allegations of major election fraud in Minneapolis, centred on the Somali community. The evidence, as they presented it, seemed damning.

The key piece of evidence was a Snapchat video featuring Liban Osman, brother of the newly elected City Councilman Jamal Hassan. It appeared to show Osman bragging about the role of money in politics and claiming that he had three hundred ballots, gathered from local voters, in his car. Envelopes, apparently containing ballots, were visible on his dashboard.

Even more explosively, the video showed a local activist, Omar Jamal, and other anonymous figures speculating about how local Democrat Congresswoman, Ilhan Omar, was behind the plot. Veritas also published another video backing up these claims on 29 September, which purported to show a man receiving $200 in order to vote for Ilhan Omar.

The allegations were catnip for many on the right. Donald Trump has repeatedly alleged massive mail-in ballot fraud, but evidence was lacking. Now Project Veritas’ video purported to provide proof, and tied it to a Democratic politician widely reviled by Republicans.

Still, many were sceptical. Critics of Project Veritas argued that the group has a track record of using unorthodox practices in its investigations, especially when it comes to figures and organisations disliked by American conservatives. Project Veritas acquired a controversial reputation in 2017, when the Washington Post said that it had uncovered a sting operation carried out by the organisation to plant what it said were false stories about alleged sexual assaults committed by Republican senate candidate Roy Moore.

The details of the affair are murky, but they don’t inspire confidence. The Washington Post said that they were contacted by a woman called Jaime Phillips, and had several reasons to doubt the validity of her accusations levelled against Moore and to believe that her attempts to discredit the Republican politician in off-the-record conversations were unfounded and politically motivated.

Project Veritas responded to the Washington Post story by accusing the paper of inventing the sting operation story to divert public attention. The group’s founder, James O’Keefe, called it an “imagined sting” designed to “turn the tables on Project Veritas”.

Roy Moore vigorously denies all of the allegations and launched a defamation lawsuit against his accusers in 2018.

Now, in the Minneapolis story Veritas’ claims are once again being placed un the spotlight – this time by local journalists from Fox News (hardly an outlet inclined to sympathise with Ilhan Omar). The Fox reporters believe that the results of the Project Veritas investigation look increasingly dubious when they are placed under a closer examination.

Raw footage of the events in question, obtained by the Fox reporters, found that the videos depicting Liban Osman did not provide key context to his remarks. Footage of the car in July had been edited and spliced together with another video from August, in which Liban Osman apparently made the comments about money in the context of making fun of rivals’ underfunded campaigns.

Even the video from July was perhaps not what it seems. As early sceptics were quick to point out, basic questions were left unasked – such as whether the ballots were sealed, if they had already been filled out, and where they came from. Full footage showed Liban Osman clarifying that he was collecting mail-in ballots from sick and elderly voters who had requested them through the campaign.

When interviewed by Fox, Liban Osman flatly denied he had filled in or tampered with the ballots in any way. He added that the apparently open ballots on the car dashboard were in fact the envelopes the ballots had come in and that he had intended to shred them at the request of voters concerned about identity fraud. He also said that, despite his boast that he had 300 ballots in the car, he said the actual number was closer to 20.

Furthermore, this “ballot harvesting” was not necessarily illegal, depending on when it took place – a state law limiting the number of other people’s ballots you could drop off for them to three was struck down on 28 July and only reinstated in September, long after the Congressional primary vote in question had ended. Liban Osman claims the video is from late July, while Veritas claims it is from 2 July.

As for the second video, supposedly showing the cash for ballots in action, it has also come under examination from reporters. Two sources have told Fox that the man in the video was a relative of Veritas’ star witness, Omar Jamal, and that the video in fact shows Jamal himself handing the man $200 intended to help a sick relative in Somalia. Indeed, in media interviews, Omar Jamal has denied that he has ever met anyone who was paid in return for a vote.

Further adding to the confusion, in his own Fox interview, Liban Osman further alleged that Omar Jamal had attempted to bribe him with $10,000 in return for claiming he was collecting ballots for Ilhan Omar.

Some researchers have even suggested the videos were part of a coordinated disinformation campaign. The first video was publicly scheduled to be released September 28. However, it was suddenly released September 27 within hours of the New York Times publishing Donald Trump’s tax returns. Influential pro-Trump social media figures all shared copies of the video very soon after its release, as opposed to simply retweeting videos posted by other social media users.

Even if Project Veritas has uncovered improper ballot harvesting – a worthy news story – the sheer confusion involved with the video footage, and the contradictory accounts of the main figures involved, makes it difficult to see how it any of this could be used as evidence to vindicate any wider claims linking the mail-in ballots to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

What is fascinating, regardless of the details of the affair, is the way in which it has been received by social media users themselves. Whether the accusations made in the Project Veritas report are true or not, they found a willing audience ready to believe the worst of Democrat politicians and subscribe to the notion that a conspiracy was unfolding to game the November presidential election.

What explains this? Part of it fits into the great narrative of our time – that political polarisation abetted by social media has undermined collective notions of truth in favour of stories that peddle shock and pander to viewers prejudices.

Now, Project Veritas’ first video alleging fraud was watched 1.1 million times on YouTube. Meanwhile, investigations which raised doubts about Veritas’ claims seem to have gained far less traction. The shocking headlines caught fire in the American public sphere, but the qualifications have struggled to cut through.

There is also an irony that one of the right’s many vocal critics of the mainstream “Fake News Media” is now facing allegations that it is guilty of exactly the sort of deceptive practises it criticises others for. This might be considered projection, or perhaps belief in the nefariousness of the left makes many on the right feel authorised to engage in the practises they believe their enemies commit. Indeed, one suspects that many Republicans genuinely believe in the sort of voter fraud conspiracies peddled by O’Keefe – making them more amenable to engaging in various forms electoral chicanery such as gerrymandering to favour their own party.

Political trickery has a long history in US politics, from Richard Nixon’s infamous 1972 campaign all the way back to Benjamin Franklin forging letters to swing international opinion against Britain during the Revolutionary War.

Previously, however, the ultimate aim of such stunts was to convince others, with the desired result of either winning new supporters or at least torpedoing others’ campaigns. Now, these tricks seem to be aimed at the already converted – propagandists are no longer trying to persuade others so much as trying convince themselves.