An image shared on social media shows a woman with glasses and brown hair in an Arizona ballot tabulation room. The posts falsely identify the woman as Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs, who is the secretary of state, implying that Hobbs was illegally influencing the count. The woman pictured is an election observer, not Hobbs.
Former President Donald Trump claimed he “sent in the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys” to Broward County during the 2018 election to stop “ballot theft” and help Ron DeSantis become Florida’s governor. But a spokesman for the county elections office said there was no “federal law enforcement presence” for that election.
There is no link between COVID-19 vaccination and an increased risk of stillbirth, despite such claims online. In fact, vaccination has been shown in multiple studies to reduce the risk of stillbirth by protecting pregnant people and their babies from the coronavirus.
Dominion voting machines have had no issues reading ballots filled out with Sharpie pens. But an Instagram video spread the false claim that ballots filled out with Sharpies could not be counted by voting machines in Pennsylvania’s 2022 election. A Pennsylvania Department of State spokesperson said the claim is “disinformation.”
Tabulating machines at some polling locations in Maricopa County, Arizona, couldn’t process ballots during part of Election Day, though affected voters could leave their ballots in a secure box or go elsewhere to vote. But some conservatives, including former President Donald Trump, made the unfounded claim that the setback indicated an attempt to “steal” the election.
A “harmless data error” resulted in a glitch at some Detroit polling precincts that incorrectly registered some in-person voters as having already been issued an absentee ballot, the city elections department said. The issue was resolved, and ballot security safeguards are in place to prevent duplicated votes, it said.
Even before the polls opened on Election Day, a potentially significant legal battle erupted in Pennsylvania over whether to count mail-in ballots with an incorrect or missing date on the outside envelope.
We are very serious fact-checkers, but we also like to have a bit of fun. That’s why every two years, on Election Day, we recognize a few of the many political ads we see during the campaign cycle with some not-to-be-taken-seriously awards.
Mail-in ballots have become a popular way to vote in the U.S. But the unfounded claim persists that mail ballots lead to rampant fraud and, if counted after Election Day, they are suspect. By law, many states don’t start counting mail ballots until after polls close, and some continue to accept them for days after Election Day if they are postmarked by that date.
Voters are about to get a respite from the political attack-ad onslaught: Election Day is tomorrow. That means no more messages from Democrats attacking Republicans over abortion rights or the future of Medicare; no more Republicans blaming Democrats for inflation or crime. At least for a little while.