While everyone was watching the presidential returns roll in, the coronavirus pandemic in the United States worsened. After a summer that saw a declining number of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths, these statistics have shot upward since the start of October. The timing is especially bad, with the transition to winter months keeping people indoors, […]
In his first public remarks since falsely saying he won re-election hours after the polls closed, President Donald Trump lashed out at ballot-counting efforts in several states, alleging with no evidence that the system was stacked against him in multiple ways. “If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal […]
Since Election Day, social media users on nearly every major platform have spread rumors of discarded ballots, mysterious new votes and sudden halts in the vote-counting process to raise doubts about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s gains in battleground states. Many of the rumors found a home in the social media accounts of President Donald […]
A video of a person alleging attempted election fraud on the part of U.S. Postal Service workers in Michigan is taking off on social media, but state and local officials say the back-dated ballots described in the video would not be counted if they weren’t received by 8 p.m. on Election Day. The Nov. 5 […]
A video spreading online claims to show Democrats and other left-leaning groups plotting a post-election coup if President Donald Trump won re-election, including the takeover of major U.S. cities and government buildings including the White House. But the 34-minute video, posted on YouTube, was deceptively edited to make it look like the individuals in the […]
A razor-thin margin, a slow vote count and a presidential election hanging in the balance have created the perfect storm for misinformation in Wisconsin. The morning after the election, social media generated an avalanche of claims about Wisconsin voting totals, timing and turnout. Much of it isn’t true. We’re separating fact from fiction on some […]
Conspiratorial-sounding posts spreading on Election Day claimed that instances of broken or locked voting machines in a handful of polling locations across the country are signs of cheating. On Twitter, the posts were accompanied by the hashtag #StoptheSteal. The claims sometimes note that malfunctions happened in districts that voted for President Donald Trump in 2016. […]
In North Carolina, lawyers fought over deadlines to receive mail ballots. In Pennsylvania, they argued over the counting of “naked ballots” lacking a secrecy envelope. And in Harris County, Texas, they sued over drive-thru voting. Those are just a tiny sample of lawsuits filed across the country ahead of the Nov. 3 election. More than […]
In the waning days of the campaign, President Donald Trump complained repeatedly on the campaign trail about how the United States tracks the number of people who have died from COVID-19, claiming, “This country and its reporting systems are just not doing it right.” He went on to blame those reporting systems for inflating the […]
While President Donald Trump has been saying that the country is rounding the corner on the coronavirus pandemic, the government’s head of infectious diseases Anthony Fauci has said the opposite, warning that the country “is in for a whole lot of hurt.” “All the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into […]
An unprecedented level of mail-in and early voting in this year’s presidential election may also create an unprecedented level of misinformation. As of Nov. 2, Americans had already cast nearly 100 million ballots — more than 70% of the total votes counted in 2016, according to data from the U.S. Elections Project. An influx of […]
If Joe Biden is elected president, Americans who own certain kinds of guns may owe the federal government some money. One Facebook post, published Oct. 29 by the page for a Texas-based apparel company, claims that Americans who own semi-automatic firearms or high-capacity magazines would be charged $200 per unit under the Democratic presidential candidate’s […]