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    • Don’t fall for these bogus claims while you wait for the 2024 election results
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    Don’t fall for these bogus claims while you wait for the 2024 election results

    Online Niel Posted on

    Amy Sherman
    | PolitiFact.com

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

    He didn’t, and we evaluated that Pants on fire. When Trump began speaking in the early morning hours of Nov. 4 at 2:21 a.m. ET, states were still following normal vote-counting procedures. 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 the polls have closed, politicians and social media influencers have spread falsehoods about voting and the vote counting process. It is likely that as the votes are counted this year, we will see similar frauds as in 2020.

    Voters looking for credible sources of information on election results can follow reports from state election officials at the national level, compiled by the National Association of State Election Directors. The A? are among news outlets that will name projected winners based on unofficial results, but in many states that it will not take place on election night.

    Here are some fakes that could appear after the polls close:

    Claims of thousands of dead voters

    It’s a zombie statement we see during every election cycle: Huge numbers the dead vote! And they are all Democrats! Neither is true.

    As vote counting was underway in November 2020, X posts falsely said that more than 14,000 people dead voted in Wayne County, Michigan.

    When voters die, it is rare for their relatives to contact local election offices to request that their names be removed from the voter rolls. But election offices routinely receive death records from state and federal sources and then remove the names of dead voters from voter rolls. Some still arrive on rolls.

    Occasionally, people illegally vote by mail in the names of deceased relatives, such as a republican did in 2020 in Nevada. The voter was charged with crimes.

    He argues that ballot errors and election website mistakes equal fraud

    Although election officials spend years preparing for presidential elections, errors 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 typographical error in some ballots in Palm Beach County, Florida. County officials said 257 overseas voters opened an email with a ballot that said “Tom” Walz instead of Tim Walz, the Democratic presidential nominee for Vice President Kamala Harris.

    Some polling sites have mishaps, such as a water leak at 6 a.m. on Election Day 2020 at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, where election workers were counting absentee ballots. Arena employees repaired the leak in about two hours and no ballots or machines were damaged. State and county election officials denied the claim that election officials used the event to circumvent lawsuits and remove ballots stored in “suitcases” that were “all for Biden.”

    He claims there were thousands of fraudulent votes in Pennsylvania

    Officials in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County said in an initial statement on Oct. 25 that they were investigating 2,500 “ballots,” but a county spokesman later said that word was a mistake and that the investigation related to claims voter registration.

    A few days later, Trump said falsely at a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, “I caught them by 2,600 votes. . . . And every vote was written by the same person.” He made similar comments on X about “fake ballots and forms” in Pennsylvania.

    State Attorney General Michelle Henry, Democrat, said in an Oct. 31 statement, “Investigations are into voter registration forms, not ballots” and were ongoing in four counties.

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

    Claims about vote-flipping machines

    As Kentucky Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams wrote November 2 on X“Gentle reminder that vote-swapping is fiction.” It related to a 2008 Homer Simpson video trying to vote for Barack Obama, but repeatedly voting for former Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

    Election officials who encounter reports of “returned” or “changed” ballots said it’s sometimes user error, and when voters bring them to their attention, officials make sure voters can vote with the choices they want.

    That’s what happened in Tarrant County when one person out of over 100,000 voters reported that the vote for Trump was changed to Harris when the ballot was printed. Local election officials said voting machines do not change candidates and suggested the voter made a mistake when selecting their preferred candidates. That ballot was destroyed and the voter was allowed to vote again.

    An October Instagram post said voting machines in Shelby County, Tenn., were switching votes from Harris to Trump. Election officials said there were no malfunctions with the voting machines. Voters inadvertently touched the wrong area of ​​the ballot paper when using touch-screen voting machines.

    There is no express voting of non-citizens

    trump card and his supporters they falsely claimed that Democrats were behind a plan to lure non-citizens into the US to vote in federal elections. That doesn’t happen. Federal law prohibits non-citizens from voting in federal elections.

    Non-citizens sometimes land on voter rolls, often by accident when they get their driver’s licenses. However, non-citizen voting in federal elections is rare. The the biggest case with convictions we found was in 2020 in North Carolina, when federal prosecutors charged 19 people with voter fraud after voting, especially in the 2016 election. For context, more than 4.5 million people in North Carolina voted in the 2016 presidential election.

    He claims election officials are tearing up or throwing away ballots

    If you’re a poll worker who commits election fraud, you probably wouldn’t film yourself opening mail-in ballot envelopes, shouting out the votes on those ballots, swearing against a candidate, and tearing up ballots marked for that candidate.

    But this is one ridiculous viral video appears to be showing, prompting X users to claim that mail-in ballots with Trump votes are being destroyed in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. federal officials said Russian actors manufactured and enhanced the video.

    Claims in 2020 regarding a large number of ballots found in the trash were either made up or they were almost spoiled ballots that were legally destroyed.

    He claims election officials are sneaking into “vote dumps” late at night

    It is common for a candidate to take the lead in the early results but not be the winner because more ballots are counted. For example, in Pennsylvania, if it takes longer to count votes in left-leaning Philadelphia than in a more lopsided part of the state, Trump may carry the state early in the night but see the margins change later .

    trump card tweeted the claim on November 4, 2020, “Last night we led, often solidly, in many key states, in almost every case Democrats led and controlled. Then, one by one, they began to magically disappear as the surprise ballots were counted.”

    In some states, Trump initially led, only to see Biden take the lead. But in other states, Biden led and Trump returned to take over.

    Exist nothing bad about updating results by local election officials in the hours and days after polls close. In effect, it means that they count all legitimate ballots. State laws dictate the process, including when officials can begin opening mail-in ballots. That means it takes time to finish counting. Some states, such as Pennsylvania, do not allow election workers to begin processing mail-in ballots until Election Day, while other states allow it to begin weeks earlier.

    It claims that mass voter fraud in 2020 affected the outcome of the election

    After the polls closed in 2020, a cascade of images and photos on social media claimed to show poll workers and others committing voter fraud. But the posts mostly showed election officials doing their job.

    The electoral system in our country makes such a theft both improbable and impossible to elaborate.

    “We should call this for what it is: Trump is laying the groundwork to be able to question the results in 2024 if he doesn’t win,” Joanna Lydgate, CEO of the nonpartisan US Center for Democracy. PolitiFact said at the beginning of October.

    To build a sufficient Electoral College margin, bad actors would have to collaborate across battleground states in a coordinated but secretive fashion, with hundreds of people risking crimes for the same goal.

    Resolving this would require thousands of illegal votes. A database maintained by the conservative Heritage Foundation shows about 1,300 convictions for voter fraud over the decades. During that time, there were billions of votes cast.

    Claims of early victory

    Speaking at the White House hours after the polls closed in 2020, Trump said“We want all votes to stop. We don’t want them finding any ballots at 4am and adding them to the list, OK? It is a very sad moment. … And we’re going to win this.”

    There is no state or federal law that says vote counting must stop a few hours after the polls close. Election officials would be breaking the law if they simply stopped counting legitimate ballots.

    State laws set the certification deadline in November or December, so the official results won’t be known for several weeks after Election Day. But media outlets are likely to project a winner much sooner.

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