A steady stream of false and misleading information is circulating online around the 2024 election. A Kentucky voting machine that registered a vote for Vice President Kamala Harris when the voter meant to select former President Donald Trump has been found to be user error, not fraud, according to officials in Laurel County, where the issue occurred. A video circulating widely on social media that shows a man who says he is a Haitian immigrant claiming he is planning to vote multiple times in Georgia is fake. U.S. intelligence officials confirmed on Friday that the video is the work of Russian influence creators.
Here’s a look at the facts.
Marjorie Taylor Greene
stated on October 18, 2024 in an X post:
"Reports from Whitfield County, GA that Dominion machines are flipping votes. This is exactly the kind of fraud we saw in 2020."
Whitfield County’s Board of Elections said there were no problems with the county’s voting machines. In the case of a voter whose choices were not accurately reflected on the printed ballot, a poll worker helped the voter and the problem was resolved on-site.
The Whitfield County Board of Elections said "no machines have been taken out of service."
There’s no evidence that Dominion voting machines flipped votes in Whitfield County, Georgia. And the statement that what happened at one of the county’s election sites amounted to "the kind of fraud we saw in 2020" is baseless; mountains of evidence show 2020 saw no widespread fraud and election officials said this case was one of user error.
We rate this claim Pants on Fire!
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Instagram posts
stated on October 20, 2024 in an Instagram post:
Voting machines in Shelby County, Tennessee, are swapping votes from Kamala Harris to Donald Trump.
Election officials said there were no voting machine malfunctions. Voters had inadvertently touched the wrong area of the ballot when using the touchscreens.
The county received three complaints about the issue at polling sites; eventually, each person who had the issue cast a ballot for the candidates of their choice.
We rate the claim Pants on Fire!
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X posts
stated on October 21, 2024 in a post:
There are “180,000 registered new Amish voters in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.”
About 93,000 Amish people live in Pennsylvania and that figure includes children who are not eligible to register to vote.
In Lancaster County, there are about 38,000 Amish people.
Pennsylvania’s voter registration form does not ask about religious identity. The Pennsylvania Department of State told NewsGuard, a company tracking online misinformation, that claims about 180,000 Amish voters in Pennsylvania were inaccurate.
Amy Gulli, a Pennsylvania Department of State spokesperson, told NewsGuard, a company tracking online misinformation, that claims about 180,000 new Amish voter registrations in 2024 in Pennsylvania were "misinformation and disinformation."
We rate this claim that 180,000 Amish people registered to vote in Lancaster, Pennsylvania False.
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Facebook posts
stated on October 22, 2024 in a photo:
In Fordyce, Arkansas, voting machines changed votes from Republican to Democrat.
Arkansas uses Nebraska-based Election Systems & Software voting machines, which the state and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission have approved.
Voting machines in Fordyce, Arkansas, are not flipping votes from Republican to Democrat.
Election workers examined the voting machine in Fordyce after a complaint was made and found no problems with it.
Chris Madison, director of the Arkansas State Board of Election Commissioners, told PolitiFact such complaints often result from voter mistakes. In such instances, poll workers are notified, the ballots are spoiled and the voters are allowed to vote again.
We saw similar claims that machines messed with votes during the 2020 election, and they have resurfaced in 2024. They were not true then, and they are not true now. We rated recent claims by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., of vote flipping in Georgia and social media claims of vote flipping in Tarrant County, Texas, Pants on Fire!
We also
rate this claim that voting machines in Arkansas changed votes from Republican to Democrat Pants on Fire!
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Facebook posts
stated on October 22, 2024 in a post:
"Breaking: Voters in Tarrant County, Texas are reporting that the voting machines are flipping their votes from Trump to Kamala Harris."
Machines aren't flipping votes in Texas, either, so
we rate the claim that they changed Trump votes to Harris in Tarrant County Pants on Fire!
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X posts
stated on October 25, 2024 in X posts:
Video shows an election worker destroying mail ballots with votes for former President Donald Trump in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
This video does not show an election worker destroying ballots in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The materials being ripped are not authentic.
The Bucks County Board of Elections issued a bipartisan statement saying "this video is fake."
A media forensics expert told PolitiFact that the video's narrative is the work of a Russian network called Storm-1516.
The video doesn’t show real mail ballots in Bucks County being destroyed.
We rate that claim Pants on Fire!
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Facebook posts
stated on October 26, 2024 in a post:
In Glynn County, Georgia, it was 'voter fraud' when poll workers found no record of a person who already voted.
We
rate the claim that it was "voter fraud" in Glynn County, Georgia, when poll workers found no record of a person who already voted False.
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Instagram posts
stated on October 28, 2024 in an Instagram post:
Video shows a ‘Democratic operative’ making credible allegations of fraud during the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
Secretly recorded video showed a man identified as Joel Caldwell making unspecific, unsubstantiated allegations of election malfeasance and reviving long-debunked claims about Georgia’s 2020 presidential election.
The 2020 presidential election ballots in Georgia were counted three times and Joe Biden won each time. Republican state officials deny allegations of widespread fraud.
We found no news reports or other information supporting social media posts’ assertions that Caldwell was involved with Georgia’s Democratic Party, and a party spokesperson said no one named Joel Caldwell was on the party’s payroll during the 2020 election cycle.
We rate the claim False.
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Instagram posts
stated on October 29, 2024 in a post:
Video shows “illegal ‘voters’ cutting the line” to vote in Pennsylvania.
Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, election officials said in a statement that a viral video captured a brief conversation between a group of voters, their translators and a local election official at a polling location.
The voters in the video were there to apply for mail-in ballots. The older and disabled voters were allowed to sit, rather than stand in line, as their applications were processed, which is standard procedure, the county said.
Only U.S. citizens who are registered to vote in Pennsylvania would have been able to apply for a mail-in ballot, the county said.
We
rate the claim that a video shows "illegal ‘voters’ cutting the line" to vote in Pennsylvania False.
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Donald Trump
stated on October 29, 2024 in a rally in Allentown, Pa.:
In Lancaster, Pa., “We caught them with 2,600 votes. We caught them cold, 2,600 votes. ... And every vote was written by the same person."
By the time Trump spoke days later, it was clear from official statements and media reports that the Lancaster investigation was about registration applications, not ballots. Trump has provided no evidence of 2,600 fraudulent or fake ballots being cast in Lancaster.
We rate this claim False.
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Facebook posts
stated on October 30, 2024 in a Facebook post:
Data shows some voters cast multiple votes, meaning "at least 164,568 illegal votes have been cast” in Michigan.
A formatting error in a report showed multiple addresses for some voters who had cast ballots, but only one vote per ID had been counted.
We rate the claim that there were 114,545 illegal votes cast in Michigan False.
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X posts
stated on October 30, 2024 in in X posts:
Video shows “ballot mule in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, (dropping) off a large amount of ballots.”
He’s no mule, a USPS spokesperson and Pennsylvania state and local officials said. He’s a postal worker doing his job and dropping off mail ballots at the courthouse, which houses the county’s elections department.
The claim is Pants on Fire!
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Social Media
stated on October 31, 2024 in a post:
Video shows “voting machines in Kentucky are not allowing voters to select” Donald Trump for president.
Kentucky election officials investigated a problem with a voting machine and found it to be an isolated incident.
A voter using a ballot marking device tapped a small check box in the corner of the text field that included the presidential and vice presidential candidates’ names, inadvertently selecting the wrong candidates.
We rate this claim Pants on Fire!
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------------To be continued --------
