Fact Check – US Elections 2024: Your Guide to Spotting Falsehoods | News about the 2024 US elections

On election night 2020, hours after the polls closed, then-President Donald Trump prematurely declared, “We have already won.”

He didn’t have that, and we rated that as “Pants on Fire.” When Trump began speaking at 2:21 a.m. ET in the early morning of Nov. 4, states were still following normal procedures to count ballots. It wasn’t until Saturday, November 7, that The Associated Press had enough unofficial results available to call the race for Joe Biden.

In the past, when polling stations closed, politicians and social media influencers spread falsehoods about voting and the vote counting process. It is likely that when votes are counted this year, we will see falsehoods similar to those seen in 2020.

Voters looking for credible sources for information about election results can follow reports from state election officials compiled by the National Association of State Election Directors. The AP is among news outlets that will declare projected winners based on unofficial results, but in many states that won’t happen on election night.

Here are some untruths that may surface after the polls close.

Claims of thousands of dead voters

It’s a zombie claim we see every election cycle: huge numbers of dead people vote! And they’re all Democrats! Neither is true.

While vote counting was underway in November 2020, X-posts incorrectly said that more than 14,000 dead had voted in Wayne County, Michigan.

When voters die, it is typically rare for their relatives to contact local election offices to request that their names be removed from the voter list. But election offices routinely receive death certificates from state and federal sources and then remove dead voters’ names from voter rolls. Some still end up on the reels.

Occasionally, people illegally cast ballots in the names of deceased relatives, as a Republican did in Nevada in 2020. That voter was charged with crimes.

Claims that voting errors and election site accidents equal fraud

Although election officials prepare for presidential elections for years, mistakes sometimes occur.

They are not a sign of fraud.

So far this year, we have seen a limited number of ballots with errors, such as a typo in some ballots in Palm Beach County, Florida. County officials said 257 out-of-state voters opened an email with a ballot that said “Tom” Walz instead of Tim Walz, the running mate of Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris.

Accidents have occurred at some election sites, such as a water leak at 6 a.m. on Election Day in 2020 at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, where election workers were counting absentee ballots. Arena crews repaired the leak in about two hours and no ballots or machines were damaged. State and county election officials debunked claims that election officials used the event to bypass processes and pull out ballots stored in “suitcases” that were “all for Biden.”

Claims of thousands of fake votes in Pennsylvania

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, officials said in an initial Oct. 25 statement that they were investigating 2,500 “ballots,” but a county spokesperson later said that word was a mistake and that the investigation involved voter registration applications.

Days later, Trump falsely said at a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, “We caught them with 2,600 votes.” … And every voice was written by the same person.” He made similar comments to X about “counterfeit ballots and forms” in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry, a Democrat, said in an Oct. 31 statement: “The investigation concerns voter registration forms, not ballots” and was ongoing in four counties.

Officials don’t put people on the voter list if their registration is suspect, so that means there weren’t thousands of fake votes.

Claims about machines flipping votes

As Republican Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams wrote on X on November 2, “Gentle reminder that vote switching is fiction.” He linked to a 2008 video in which Homer Simpson tried to vote for Barack Obama but repeatedly voted for former Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

Election officials who have encountered reports of “flipped” or “switched” votes have said that this is sometimes user error and that when it is brought to their attention, officials ensure voters can cast their ballot with the ballot they prefer. choices.

That’s what happened in Tarrant County, Texas, when one in more than 100,000 voters reported that their vote for Trump had changed to Harris when the ballot was printed. Local election officials said the voting machines did not flip candidates and suggested the voter made an error in selecting preferred candidates. That ballot was destroyed and the voter was allowed to vote again.

An Instagram post from October said voting machines in Shelby County, Tennessee, switched votes from Harris to Trump. Election officials said there were no malfunctions with the voting machines. Voters had accidentally touched the wrong part of the ballot when using the touchscreen voting machines.

Unbridled voting by non-citizens does not occur

Trump and his supporters have falsely claimed that Democrats are behind a scheme to lure noncitizens to the US to vote in federal elections. That doesn’t happen.

Federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections.

Non-citizens sometimes end up on the electoral roll, often by accident when obtaining a driver’s license. However, voting by non-citizens in federal elections is rare. The largest conviction case we found occurred in North Carolina in 2020, when federal prosecutors charged 19 people with voter fraud after they cast ballots, mostly during the 2016 election. For context, more than 4.5 million people in North Carolinians voted in the 2016 presidential election.

Claims that election officials are tearing up or throwing away ballots

If you were an election worker committing election fraud, you probably wouldn’t film yourself opening ballot envelopes, calling out the votes in those ballots, cursing at a candidate, and tearing up ballots marked for that candidate.

But that’s what a ridiculous viral video appears to show, leading X users to claim ballots with votes for Trump are being destroyed in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Federal officials said Russian actors fabricated and amplified the video.

Claims in 2020 about large numbers of ballots found in trash were fabricated or involved counterfeit ballots that had been legally destroyed.

Claims election officials are sneaking into “ballot dumps” late at night

It is common for one candidate to take the lead in the early results, but not become the winner as more votes are counted. In Pennsylvania, for example, if it takes longer to count votes in left-leaning Philadelphia than in a more right-wing part of the state, it’s possible that Trump could lead the state early in the night but see the margins shift later.

Trump tweeted the claim on November 4, 2020: “Last night I led, often solidly, in many key states, in almost all cases led and controlled by Democrats. Then, one by one, they began to magically disappear as the surprise ballots were counted.”

Trump initially led in some states, but Biden eventually took the lead. But in other states, Biden led and Trump came back to take the lead.

There is nothing nefarious about local election officials updating results in the hours and days after polls close. Basically, this means they count all legitimate ballots. State law dictates the process, including when officials can begin opening ballots. That means it takes time to complete the count. Some states, such as Pennsylvania, do not allow election workers to begin processing ballots until Election Day, while other states allow it to begin weeks earlier.

Claims that massive voter fraud in 2020 influenced the outcome of the election

After polls closed in 2020, a flurry of images and photos on social media alleged poll workers and others were committing voter fraud. But the messages mainly showed election officials doing their work.

Our country’s election system makes such a heist both unlikely and impossibly detailed.

“We need to call this what it is: Trump is laying the groundwork so that he can challenge the 2024 results if he doesn’t win,” Joanna Lydgate, CEO of the nonpartisan States United Democracy Center, told PolitiFact in early October.

To build a sufficient margin of the Electoral College, bad actors would have to work together in a coordinated but covert manner across the battleground states, putting hundreds of people at risk of committing crimes for the same purpose.

To achieve this would require thousands of illegal votes. A database maintained by the conservative Heritage Foundation shows about 1,300 voter fraud convictions spanning decades. Billions of votes were cast during that period.

Claims of early victory

Speaking at the White House hours after polls closed in 2020, Trump said: “We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them finding ballots at four in the morning and adding them to the list, okay? It’s a very sad moment. … And we will win this.”

There is no state or federal law that requires vote counting to stop a few hours after the polls close. Election officials would have broken the laws if they had simply stopped counting legitimate ballots.

State law sets the certification deadline in November or December, so official results won’t be known until weeks after Election Day. However, the media will probably predict a winner much earlier.