Misleading 2020 election claims fact-checked

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1) Fact Check: This Map Does NOT Show Returns In NY Gubernatorial Race After Counting 99% Of Votes

Does a viral map claiming that identical tallies turned New York predominantly blue in the gubernatorial race with ">99%" votes allegedly counted prove election fraud? No, that's not true: Even three days after the video with the map was supposedly recorded, not a single news source showed the counted votes reaching the 99 percent benchmark. By then, the Republican candidate Lee Zeldin had already conceded, accepting the results.



2)Fact Check: Cyber Sleuths Did NOT Spot Immigrants Voting With Fake IDs In Colorado

Did the U.S. Army Cyber Command find evidence that immigrants lacking permanent legal status in Colorado used fraudulent state identification cards to vote for Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections? No, that's not true: The claim originated on a webpage that is known for publishing satirical, fake takes on real people and issues in U.S. news and politics.



3)Fact Check: Dominion Tabulators Were NOT Problem Machines Used In Maricopa County, AZ - Runbeck Supplied The Machines & Technology

Were Dominion Voting System tabulators the machines that caused problems in Maricopa County, Arizona on Election Day, November 8, 2022? No, that's not true: "Runbeck is our printer vendor," Maricopa County Elections Department Communications Director Megan Gilberston told Lead Stories. "It was not the Dominion Voting System tabulators." Runbeck Election Services, Inc.'s spokesperson confirmed to Lead Stories that it had sold Maricopa County the printer system that malfunctioned during the 2022 general election and the ballot-on-demand technology that prints out a ballot for each voter.



4)Fact Check: NO Evidence US Military Found 'Election Fraud Amid Fizzled Red Wave'

Did the U.S. military find "evidence of election fraud amid fizzled red wave"? No, that's not true: This claim was made on a website known for publishing fabricated content.



5)Fact Check: Image Does NOT Show Democratic Candidate for AZ Governor, Katie Hobbs, In Ballot Counting Center

Does a photograph show the Democratic candidate for governor of Arizona, Katie Hobbs, walking through a ballot-counting center in Maricopa County, the state's largest voting district? No, that's not true: A spokesman for Maricopa County told Lead Stories that the woman in the photo is a party election observer.



6)Fact Check: Typos In RSBN Graphic Are NOT Evidence Of Election Fraud In PA Gov Race

Do incorrect numbers posted to on-screen graphics during a live streamer's coverage of Election Night prove there was election fraud in the 2022 Pennsylvania governor's race? No, that's not true: Those graphics are not produced by election officials and are not official results. They are a live-streaming broadcaster's responsibility.

Anchors during a live broadcast of Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN) on Election Night, November 8, 2022, noticed errors in the proportions of votes attributed to Republican Doug Mastriano and Democrat Josh Shapiro in a screen graphic. It was taken down almost immediately. The next time the show aired information about the race the percentage numbers were correct.



7)Fact Check: Photos Do NOT Show Detroit Ballots Arriving After 'Legal' Deadline

Do online photographs show absentee ballots arriving at a Detroit processing center on Election Day "hours after the legal deadline" for counting ballots? No, that's not true: Election officials in Detroit say late-night deliveries are the normal -- and legal -- part of the process of collecting absentee ballots for verification and tabulation.

The claim appeared in a November 9, 2022, story on the Gateway Pundit with the title "Here We Go Again... Suspicious Ballots Arrive Way After Legal Deadline in Detroit."



8)Fact Check: Wisconsin Poll Worker Was NOT Caught 'Rigging Ballots On Live TV'

Did a poll worker in Dane County, Wisconsin get caught rigging ballots on live television? No, that's not true: The Dane County Clerk, whose office records election information, explained that this poll worker was doing routine work, preparing ballots to pass out to voters.

9)Fact Check-Images do not show ballots dumped during 2022 midterm elections

Reverse image search reveals that the two photographs used in the tweet pre-date the midterm elections.

The image on the left that appears to show envelopes strewn across the side of a road featured in a FOX 11 news article in February 2021 (see photo 12 in the slideshow) (here).

Per FOX 11, the image was part of a series of photographs released to the outlet by the Outagamie County Sheriff’s Office and shows absentee ballots among other mail found in a ditch in Greenwich in September 2019.

The image on the right was also not captured in 2022. The photograph featured in news reports published in October 2020 (here), (here).

The news outlets were reporting on a U.S. Postal Service (USPS) mail carrier from Hudson County who was arrested on Oct 7, 2020, for discarding post, including 99 general election ballots intended to be delivered to West Orange residents (here).

The description of the account in question also indicates that the profile is satirical in nature: “Speculation News, because it's all made up anyway” (archive.ph/vveHK).

Meanwhile, Pam Smith, president of the non-governmental organization Verified Voting, told Reuters that the organization has seen “no evidence” to support the claim that thousands of ballots have been dumped during the midterm elections.

“Election officials are working to ensure that every eligible vote is counted accurately,” Smith said.



10)Fact Check-Joe Biden did not announce plan to cheat by ‘dumping ballots’ during U.S. midterms; Vote ‘spikes’ are not evidence of fraud

False. Joe Biden did not announce a plan to cheat or “dump ballots” during the U.S. midterm elections, and experts told Reuters that a “spike” in votes is not evidence of a fraudulent election.
Users making this claim refer to remarks by Biden on standing up for democracy on Nov. 2 in which he indeed noted that “it takes time to count all legitimate ballots in a legal and orderly manner” and that “it’s important for citizens to be patient” (here).

A video of Biden’s remarks, where he begins speaking about counting ballots, can be seen around the 16:44 timestamp (here).
But nowhere in the speech does Biden “announce” cheating or dumping ballots during the midterm elections. Instead, he mentioned how “more and more ballots are cast in early voting or by mail in America” and that “many states don’t start counting those ballots until after the polls close on November 8th.”

“That means, in some cases, we won’t know the winner of the election for a few days — until after a few days after the election,” Biden said during the speech.



11)Supposed 'Ballot Drops' Did Not Swing 2022 Election Results
A throwback to 2020, these claims attempt to frame legitimately cast mail-in ballots as invalid.

During the 2020 presidential election, far-right conspiracy blog The Gateway Pundit aggressively pushed the notion, still championed by former U.S. President Donald Trump two years later, that nefarious "dumps" or "drops" of allegedly illegitimate ballots pushed Democratic candidates over the edge to win in several contests. Such assertions characterize the fact that absentee ballots — whose use the GOP has aggressively shunned since 2020 — take longer to count and swing Democratic as evidence of fraud.

Prior to Election Day 2022, many experts suggested that bad actors would frame the addition of mailed ballots to a vote count as evidence of fraud. The Gateway Pundit, after initially declaring victory, predictably delivered these unfounded talking points after it became clear their expectations had not been met.
As was the case in 2020, these 2022 election claims weaponize well-understood voting phenomena as supposed evidence of fraud by asserting that "drops" of ballots are mysterious or unexplained. Because that is not the case, the claim is false.



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12)Maggie Hassan didn’t win 1,106 votes in Columbia, New Hampshire. It was a typo

When we reviewed the vote totals in the race from each county and city, the secretary of state’s site showed Hassan winning 106 votes from Columbia while Bolduc won 193. That tracks with the total number of ballots cast in Columbia: 309.

The secretary of state’s office sent PolitiFact a press release in response to questions about the posts. The 1,106 figure was "a simple typo," according to the statement announcing a correction in the vote tally for the senate race.

The mistake, which was corrected and reflected in the now-online results, didn’t change the election’s outcome.

We rate claims that Hassan won more votes in Columbia, New Hampshire, than were cast False.



13)The claim: Democrats used 47 million mail-in ballots to steal every U.S. midterm election

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that Democrats used 47 million mail-in ballots to steal every U.S. midterm election in the country. Officials ensure every mail-in ballot is associated with an eligible voter, as USA TODAY previously reported, and states have measures in place to detect voter fraud by mail. It is not clear how many mail-in ballots were counted in the midterms. But Democrat incumbents have lost races, and ticket-splitting is not a sign of election fraud, experts say.



14)Fact check: Video shows misuse of NY ballot marker, not a malfunctioning vote tabulator

Our rating: Missing context

Based on our research, we rate MISSING CONTEXT the implication that there was wrongdoing in a rejected New York ballot. The person voting in the social media post was using an AutoMARK machine, which marks ballots for people with physical disabilities and language barriers, thinking it was a ballot tabulator. A spokesperson for the company that makes the machine said the machine doesn't work when fed handwritten ballots.



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15)Trump falsely claims Nevada and Arizona election officials ‘want more time to cheat’

Election results take time to count. The number of mail-in ballots that need processing, the margins of the contests and the state’s laws for counting the votes all influence when results are reported.
In Nevada, mail-in ballots can be received until Nov. 12 as long as they are postmarked before Election Day. Arizona’s most populous county had a record number of mail ballots dropped off on Election Day. All of these ballots need processing, and that takes time.

Trump’s claim lacks evidence and ignores established legal procedures for vote counting. His claim is wrong and ridiculous. We rate it Pants on Fire!



16)More than 1.13 million votes were counted within 24 hours of Election Day, not just 62,000

While there was an update that included 62,000 ballots, that was one of three updates after the initial release of results. In the 24 hours after the initial release, the county had included over 273,000 additional ballots in its tally.

We rate this claim False.



17)Trump claimed that in Detroit, "People are showing up to Vote only to be told, ‘sorry, you have already voted.’"

Election officials said a computer glitch wrongly signaled that ballots about to be given to some Detroit voters at the polls had already been issued as absentee. The computer error did not mean the voters themselves had already cast absentee ballots.

Election officials said poll workers were able to work around the errors, and all eligible voters were able to cast their ballots.

Detroit voters were not told at polls that they had already voted

We rate Trump’s claim False.


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18)Social media followings of Katie Hobbs, Kari Lake, not evidence of fraud

Syracuse University professor Jennifer Stromer-Galley, who studies political social media messaging, told NPR in August that although social media helps amplify a candidate's message, it doesn’t automatically translate to election wins. They’re "talking primarily to supporters," Stromer-Galley said, but that could include people out of state who won’t vote in that candidate’s election.*

There is no evidence of widespread fraud in the Arizona gubernatorial election, least of all because Hobbs has fewer Instagram followers than Lake.*

We rate that claim Pants on Fire!



19)Florida midterm results came out fast. Why do other states need more time?

Florida law allows for early processing of mail-in ballots and, in many counties, machines speed up the processing of those ballots. Key races in Florida were also won by larger margins than races in Arizona and Nevada, which made it easier to call them earlier.*

A record number of mail ballots were dropped off on Election Day at polling places in Maricopa County, Arizona — a practice that is not allowed in Florida. Those ballots take more time to process. And in Arizona and Nevada, voters have more time than Floridians to resolve any discrepancies with their ballots.*

We rate these claims False.



20)An Instagram post claimed Hobbs "sent 6,000 wrong ballots to Republicans."

That’s inaccurate. 1,000 voters in Arizona mistakenly received mail-in ballots that included only federal candidates, not state and local candidates.*

County officials sent the ballots, not Hobbs’ office. And about 20% of voters who received the federal-only ballots were Republicans.

We rate this claim False.*



21)Fact Check: NO Election Fraud When 'Bunch Of Bags Just Randomly Arrive' At Maricopa County Counting Center -- It's Routine Process

Does a "bunch of bags" randomly arriving at the Maricopa County, Arizona, counting center prove that election fraud occurred there? No, that's not true: The black canvas bags in the image are used to transport voted ballots and results from vote centers on Election Day. The bags are heavily secured and under constant surveillance by members of both the Democratic and Republican parties. It is standard operating procedure for the bags to be in the ballot tabulation center where ballots cast are reconciled against check-ins.




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22)Fact Check: Katie Hobbs Did NOT Contact Twitter To Have Posts Removed To Censor Political Opponents
Did Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs' office contact Twitter to have posts removed to censor political opponents? No, that's not true: Hobbs' office asked the Center for Internet Security in 2021 to alert Twitter about an account that was making false claims about the state's voter information database.

The tweets that were flagged had nothing to do with the 2022 gubernatorial election or Hobbs' later opponent in the race for governor, Kari Lake. Neither Hobbs nor Lake had declared their candidacies for governor of Arizona when the Secretary of State's office sent its request to the Center.



23)Fact Check: Arizona Did NOT Vote All Red Except For The Governor
Did Arizona drag out midterm election ballot-counting for a week so that the tally would award the governor's race to Katie Hobbs -- the Democrat in charge of all state elections -- despite voters going "red in every other category"? No, that's not true: election results showed several other races in Arizona -- known for split-ticket ballots -- went blue in 2022. In addition to Hobbs, voters re-elected Democrat Mark Kelly to the U.S. Senate from Arizona and elected Democrat Adrian Fontes as secretary of state. Experts told Lead Stories vote counting can legally continue after Election Day. Also, while Hobbs is the current secretary of state, the person in that position can't control ballot counts.



24)No, early Georgia election results aren’t evidence of fraud
The changing percentage of votes each candidate received in the Georgia U.S. Senate election runoff reflects more counties reporting their election results; it’s not evidence of fraud.*



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