NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what did not happen last week

R&I NV — In the days after Joe Biden was named the winner of the Nov. 3 election, baseless claims about voting irregularities continued to flood social media, despite statements from international observers and election officials that there were no serious problems.

CLAIM: Voter fraud has been found after women’s maiden names were used to cast ballots in other states.

THE FACTS: The false narrative that women’s maiden names were being used without their knowledge to cast votes in other states circulated with the hashtag #maidengate, and was targeted at states including battlegrounds Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania “Voter fraud strategy discovered. Married women’s maiden name was used to register and stack up extra votes. #MaidenGate,” one tweet said. Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for Common Cause, a nonpartisan election watchdog group, told the AP, “There’s no evidence of this taking place.” Jason Roberts, political science professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that in order to pull off this feat, a voter would have to go into another state and know the address and former name of a person. They would also have to know that the person’s voter registration in the state was not already deactivated. Numerous safeguards are in place to detect voting fraud like this. “You then have to state their name, state their address and sign an affidavit saying this was you,” Roberts said. “All of this is under penalty of felony, and then vote.” Even then, when a person first registers to vote, a form of ID is typically required.

CLAIM: In Fulton County, Georgia, 132,000 ballots had a “change of address” and the votes are likely to be “ineligible.”

THE FACTS: On Nov. 8, false claims surfaced on social media regarding votes in Fulton County, home to the state’s capital, Atlanta, where more than 522,000 people cast ballots in the presidential election. One Twitter user who shared the false information pointed to screenshots of supposed voter files, saying that there were 132,000 change of address notations, or “CoAs” for short. “We have access to voter files. That is our business,” wrote a Twitter user. “There are ≈132k CoA flags on the rolls in Fulton County, Georgia. First image excludes CoAs, the second does not. It’s not ‘disputed’. It is reality.” County election officials said the claims did not show an official elections database and were not true. “Fulton County is aware of allegations of 132,000 ballots being ‘flagged,’” Regina Waller, a spokesperson for Fulton County told the AP in an email. “These claims are simply false and baseless.”

CLAIM: Video shows two men at a church wedding discovering discarded and torn ballots marked for President Donald Trump in the trash.

THE FACTS: Officials with the Oklahoma State Election Board said the video shows spoiled ballots where the voter marked more than one option. The ballots were discarded at a polling place. In a video viewed more than 150,000 times on Twitter, two men claim to have found ballots marked for Trump when they went out to take out the trash during a wedding at a church. We wanted to show you what we found,” one man says. The men then remove ballots from a trash bag, going through each one to show votes from Trump. “This is even happening in Oklahoma guys,” said one of the men, noting that Oklahoma votes “red” and overwhelmingly supported Trump. The Instagram video received thousands of shares online with some posts suggesting the men were in Nevada. The posts shared the video to allege fraud in the 2020 election. “Patriots at wedding in Oklahoma find DISCARDED & torn up ballots that were TRUMP VOTES! Isn’t it interesting… when WE find ballots that were thrown away they’re ALWAYS TRUMP Votes But when THEY find ballots that were not counted yet they’re ALWAYS ALL Biden VOTES,” one Twitter post said. The Oklahoma State Election Board addressed the video on Twitter explaining that it showed spoiled ballots in Tulsa County where the voter marked more than one option in a race. The board also shared a photo of affidavits signed by voters acknowledging their ballots were spoiled.

Martin Sole

Article URL : https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/not-real-news-a-look-at-what-did-not-happen-last-week-facts-pennsylvania-names-claim-twitter-b1722730.html

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