As votes continue to be counted in key states across the country, President Donald Trump and his allies in right-wing media have launched an all-out assault on facts about mail-in voting and the ballot-counting process, in an attempt to sow chaos and confusion around the election results favoring Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
Conservative propagandists are pushing misleading or false stories around Election Day, often relying on scandalizing or cherry-picking banal local incidents. Many have been swiftly debunked by experts and local election officials, but not before the claims have been disseminated across the internet.
Here are just some of the bogus claims about election and voter fraud right-wing media have made over the last several days:
False claims about ballots and voters
There are false claims that voter turnout in Wisconsin is unusually high and that it may be indicative of fraud. Right-wing media figures are claiming that the voter turnout in Wisconsin is 89%, but this number is unambiguously wrong. Wisconsin is one of 19 states along with the District of Columbia that allow eligible voters to register on Election Day. As a result, the Wisconsin Elections Commission “calculates voter turnout as a percentage of the voting-age population,” not the number of registered voters prior to the election, finding that roughly 73% of the eligible voters cast ballots in Wisconsin this year. Though the state’s voter turnout in 2020 is higher than in some past elections, it is not even a record -- let alone a sign of potential fraud. [Media Matters, 11/5/20]
A false tweet claimed that Biden had received 100% of newly counted votes — approximately 128,000 — in Michigan. This claim was later retweeted by Trump, who wrote: “WHAT IS THIS ALL ABOUT?” The person who originally posted the claim, conservative columnist Matt Mackowiak, “later deleted this tweet after it was revealed that the suspicious boost was the result of a typo” in one county. [Snopes, 11/4/20]
A graphic taken from a Fox 2 Detroit news report supposedly showed proof of voter fraud connected to the 2020 presidential election. The graphic “alleged the discovery of 4,788 duplicate voter registrations, 32,519 more registered voters than eligible voters, 2,503 dead people registered to vote, and ‘one voter born in 1823.’” However, this news segment actually aired in December 2019, when these issues raised in a lawsuit were resolved by the city of Detroit and the case was dropped by the Public Interest Legal Foundation, “a conservative legal group with myriad ties to both the Trump Administration and right-wing media.” [Snopes, 11/4/20]
A viral video, which the president's son Eric Trump also pushed, falsely claimed to show someone setting 80 Trump ballots on fire in Virginia. Election officials debunked the video, noting that the papers being burned were clearly meaningless sample ballots. [CNN, 11/4/20]
Right-wing media have also pushed a debunked claim about use of Sharpies invalidating Arizona ballots. A false claim has been circulating in the right-wing media echo chamber alleging that poll workers in Arizona had voters supporting Trump fill out their ballots using Sharpie permanent markers in order to invalidate them. Local officials have explained that Sharpies are acceptable ink for use on ballots -- but the claim continues to spread. [Media Matters, 11/4/20]
Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo falsely claimed “there were tons of ballots found under a rock in Arizona.” In reality, only 18 mail-in ballots were missing, and they were found still sealed and delivered in time for Election Day. [Media Matters, 11/4/20]
As votes are still being counted, conservative media falsely claim that mail-in ballots are “magically appearing” for Biden. In reality, experts warned for weeks that the country would likely not know the winner on election night, in large part because mail-in voting has been expanded during the pandemic. Experts warned that this could mean one candidate would appear to be ahead on election night while the other would surge ahead afterward. Also, mail-in ballots were largely projected to skew Democratic. [Media Matters, 11/4/20]
Rush Limbaugh pushed an easily debunked claim that “Wisconsin now has more votes than people who are registered to vote." Limbaugh appeared to be citing a falsehood that originated on Parler and circulated on TikTok and other social media platforms on Wednesday claiming that “Wisconsin counted 3,239,920 votes but only has 3,129,000 registered voters.” In reality, as Snopes pointed out, the 3,129,000 figure was Wisconsin’s number of registered voters during the 2018 midterms. As of November 1, 2020, the state had 3,684,726 active registered voters, greater than both 3,129,000 and the total number of recorded votes as of posting, 3,297,420. [Media Matters, 11/4/20; The New York Times, 11/3/20]
Conservative media falsely accused Pennsylvania’s attorney general of rigging the election after he called for all legal votes to be counted. After Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro tweeted in defense of all votes being counted in the state, right-wing media accused him of interfering in the election and predetermining the results before votes were counted. [Media Matters, 11/3/20]
Conservative media spread an Instagram user’s claim that they threw out over 100 ballots for Trump in Erie, Pennsylvania. Though the screenshotted story was spread among right-wing media, an election coordinator made it clear that the Instagram user “is not one of our poll workers and there is no one with that name registered to vote in Erie.” [Twitter, 11/3/20]
False claims about polling locations and poll watchers
Right-wing media helped spread a video falsely claiming to show suspicious activity at a Detroit polling place. The video purported to show a man wheeling in a wagon full of what Trump supporters claimed to be ballots; in reality, the video showed a local television cameraperson wheeling in equipment. [Media Matters, 11/5/20]
Right-wing media tried to turn a banal incident at a Philadelphia polling station into an election scandal. Conservative propagandists scandalized an incident in which a poll watcher from Trump’s campaign was briefly turned away in Philadelphia. According to the city’s election commission and the polling place’s election judge, the incident was a mistake that was handled promptly, and the poll watcher was subsequently allowed in. [Media Matters, 11/3/20]
Conservative Twitter figure James Woods claimed that a voting machine glitch in Georgia was evidence of “civil war level cheating” by the Democrats because this county was a “high percentage Trump district.” There was a glitch that caused voting machines in Spalding County, Georgia, to go down, but the county's Elections Supervisor Marcia Ridley ensured that voters would still be able to cast their votes via paper ballots until the issue was resolved. [Snopes, 11/3/20]
Trump campaign staffer Mike Roman spread a false rumor that Democrats were illegally campaigning at a Philadelphia polling station. The Philadelphia district attorney responded on Twitter that “members of our Election Task Force have investigated this allegation,” calling the tweet “deliberately deceptive.” As The Associated Press recently reported, Roman has a long history of pushing bogus claims of voter fraud on behalf of Republicans. [BuzzFeed, 11/3/20]
Right-wing media began circulating a rumor claiming that election officials in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, were blocking the observation of absentee-vote processing. Conservative author Stephen Moore originally tweeted about this on Election Day. Officials in Allegheny County responded to these allegations, saying, “No one is being blocked from anything and no one has reported anything or raised any concerns at the site.” [Snopes, 11/3/20]