In remarks resembling an attack on democratic elections, rather than a presidential speech, President Donald Trump doubled down on his campaign pledge: “The only way we can lose, in my opinion, is massive fraud.”
The votes are still being counted and the results are unofficial, but former Vice President Joe Biden already has surpassed former President Barack Obama’s record of 69.4 million votes in 2008. But conservative personalities on social media falsely dismiss that achievement as “a damn lie.”
In the two days after Election Day, Twitter has added warning labels to nine of President Trump’s election-related tweets, cautioning the messages “might be misleading.” They are misleading, and in some cases, false.
An inaccurate graphic on a local TV station briefly showed one Pennsylvania county with more mail-in votes than the number of ballots it had received. The graphic was quickly corrected, but Facebook users are now sharing screenshots of it to misleadingly suggest it is evidence of voter fraud.
A bogus QAnon-related claim that many of the mail-in ballots for the Nov. 3 election were illegitimate has spread widely on social media. But the claim is based on the faulty assumption that ballots are produced by the federal government.
Viral posts on Facebook falsely claim “we have the results of the senate & house, but not the President,” suggesting it is evidence of fraud. In fact, mail-in ballots for all federal races are still being counted in some states.
President Trump misleadingly said early in the morning after Election Day that ballot counting in states where he was leading had been “called off,” baselessly suggesting there was something suspicious happening.
Before all of the votes in the 2020 election were counted, President Donald Trump wrongly claimed victory, calling for “all voting to stop” and claiming continuing to count legally cast votes would “disenfranchise” the people who voted for him.
A story circulating on social media deceptively claims “Bad Things Are Happening in PA.” It overstates the significance of a video that shows a Republican poll watcher being denied access to a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day, and it falsely claims that there was an illegal political sign at another city location.
A video suggesting that there’s been “voter fraud” in Utah has been circulating online, but all it actually shows is a misunderstanding of a poll worker’s mistake on the first day of early, in-person voting. The mistake was corrected and the system worked, as intended.