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Fast Take
Ballots have been nonetheless being counted within the days following the 2024 election, however a declare that there was a suspicious hole of 15 million to twenty million votes as in contrast with the 2020 election has been circulating on social media. There is no such thing as a such giant hole — states have been nonetheless counting their ballots — and even when there are fewer votes for the Democratic candidate than there have been 4 years in the past, that doesn’t show fraud.
Full Story
President-elect Donald Trump has a historical past of creating false claims about voter fraud. After he misplaced the 2020 election, Trump falsely blamed it on fraud, and he and his supporters have continued to spread those claims for years.
When returns in 2024 started to obviously favor Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris, although, posts making claims about voter fraud slowed, and accounts that had beforehand boosted the narrative that U.S. elections have been beset with fraud shortly embraced the result.
However social media posts at the moment are utilizing incomplete vote counts for the 2024 election to proceed to say that the 2020 election was fraudulent, whereas different, left-leaning accounts are posting equally inaccurate claims suggesting that “lacking” votes point out fraud on this election.
Early within the morning following Election Day, conservative influencer Benny Johnson posted on X, “Bizarre how +20 million Democrats simply disappeared in a single election from 2020 to 2024[.] Tremendous duper unusual man[.] Joe Biden bought 81 million votes Kamala bought 60? Very Sus.”
4 hours later, at about 8 a.m. on Nov. 6, ZeroHedge — a web site that has a historical past of spreading misinformation — posted on X a graph that appeared to point out about 15 million extra votes for the Democratic candidate in 2020 in contrast with the 2012, 2016 and 2024 elections.
One other in style account referred to as “DC_Draino,” which is run by the conservative influencer Rogan O’Handley, posted the graph on Instagram later that day with this remark: “Boy did they pull a LOT of shenanigans in 2020. Fortunately we cleaned up our elections simply sufficient to cease the steal in 2024.”
O’Handley later adopted up on that declare and posted side-by-side maps of California’s outcomes by county in 2020 and 2024, suggesting that the maps indicated fraud, writing, “I feel we discovered the place a few of these 16 million thriller Biden ballots have been being laundered.”
These on the opposite facet of the political spectrum appear to be circulating a distinct fraud declare, saying issues such as, “people who voted by mail are doing the Observe My Vote factor, all 20 million that voted D which have reported up to now say they have been informed they didn’t vote. Together with my cousin and sister. Two totally different states. 20 million lacking Democrat votes and Kamala goes to name trump at 4 pm in the present day to concede?”
However, actually, there’s nothing nefarious occurring. It’s simply that not the entire ballots have been counted but.
In 2012, Barack Obama received each the electoral and in style votes, receiving 66 million votes to Mitt Romney’s 61 million.
In 2016, Trump received the electoral school however misplaced the favored vote, receiving 63 million votes to Hillary Clinton’s 66 million.
In 2020, which had record-high turnout, Biden received each the electoral and in style votes, receiving 81 million votes to Trump’s 74 million.
In 2024, not all of the ballots have been counted but.
The morning after the election, Johnson had stated that Harris bought 60 million votes. However the complete was 72.4 million for Harris as of the morning of Nov. 13, based on the Associated Press’ tally, which confirmed that each one however two states have but to depend the entire ballots.
California, which O’Handley highlighted in his Nov. 7 post, nonetheless had thousands and thousands of votes left to depend on that day. On Nov. 8, as of about 5 p.m., the California secretary of state’s workplace estimated there have been about 5 million ballots left to course of. There have been nonetheless an estimated 2.1 million votes uncounted in California, as of Nov. 13.
California, the place some races for the Home of Representatives haven’t but been referred to as per week after the election, takes a very long time to depend ballots. The New York Instances explained in a Nov. 11 story that the state offers with a whole lot of mail-in ballots, that are despatched to each energetic, registered voter and take longer to course of than in-person votes. California additionally accepts ballots as much as seven days after Election Day so long as they’re postmarked by Election Day.
It’s additionally value noting that Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company, stated in a statement on Nov. 6 that on this election “now we have no proof of any malicious exercise that had a fabric influence on the safety or integrity of our election infrastructure.”
“Now,” she stated, “election officers will perform their obligation to certify the outcomes and make sure that each eligible vote has been counted as forged.”
After all of the votes have been counted, it’s potential that extra ballots have been forged in 2020, and it’s possible that Harris will garner fewer votes than President Joe Biden did 4 years in the past. However that’s not proof of fraud; in reality, it’s occurred earlier than. In 1988, George H.W. Bush obtained almost 49 million votes, which was 5.6 million fewer than his Republican predecessor, Ronald Reagan, received in 1984. And in 2012 Barack Obama introduced in about 66 million votes, which was 3.6 million fewer than he obtained in 2008.
So, the underside line is that evaluating early vote counts to 2020 vote totals doesn’t show that there was any sort of fraud in that election or on this one.
Editor’s notice: FactCheck.org is one in every of a number of organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our earlier tales will be discovered here. Fb has no control over our editorial content material.
Sources
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