A social media post cited by Elon Musk to bolster his argument that mail-in voting should be curtailed, and which was subsequently amplified by President Donald Trump, makes the false and long-ago debunked claim that in the 2020 election, “Pennsylvania sent out 1,823,148 mail-in ballots but received back around 2.5 MILLION mail-in ballots.”
President Donald Trump launched his second-term assault on mail-in ballots and electronic voting machines on Aug. 18, firing off a series of unfounded claims while announcing an effort to do away with both.
It is possible, even likely, that we will not have a projected winner of the presidential race on Nov. 5 – Election Day. And that doesn’t mean there’s something nefarious going on with the vote-counting.
Former President Donald Trump cited the dubious results of a poll commissioned by a conservative group as the foundation for his latest claim of rampant voter fraud among mail-in voters.
In a Feb. 20 town hall in South Carolina that aired on Fox News, days before the state’s Republican primary, former President Donald Trump repeated several false and misleading claims we’ve fact-checked before.
In a victory speech after decisively winning the Iowa GOP caucus on Jan. 15, former President Donald Trump twisted some facts on terrorism, mail-in voting and his record in Iowa caucuses.
A judge on Dec. 24 dismissed Kari Lake’s claim that there was no chain of custody for 300,000 mail-in ballots in Maricopa County, Arizona, during the 2022 election, yet posts on social media continue to spread the baseless claim. Every mail-in ballot in the county had a unique barcode and chain of custody documents to ensure security, election officials said.
Close Senate races are underway in some states that have different laws regarding ballot deadlines and tabulation. But some high-profile Republicans — including former President Donald Trump — have suggested, without any evidence, that “they” are trying to “cheat.” Officials in those states say they are simply trying to count every legitimate vote.
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.
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.