Maricopa County, Arizona

Does a video show "illegal cutout windows" in Maricopa County, Arizona, ballot envelopes in order to make it easy to identify Republican ballots for election-fraud purposes? No, that's not true: The window in the outgoing enveloppes is there so the QR code can be scanned as part of ballot-quality control during primaries, former Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer told Lead…

Did Sheriff Joe Arpaio hold a press conference on Barack Obama's birth certificate in February 2025? No, that's not true: The posted footage of the press conference held by the former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona is from 2016, not 2025 as is implied by a post on social media. The press conference was documented by local media in 2016.…

Did election fraud occur when 60 people in Maricopa County, Arizona, registered to vote using a municipal building as their home address? No, that's not true: The Maricopa County public information officer told Lead Stories that the voters registered in this building, the West Court Building, do not have a permanent address and can use the courthouse as their address.…

Has police Deputy Tyler Cooper in a town called Surprise found a 2-year-old boy wandering alone, and can't the police find his mother named Ella? No, that's not true: The "deputy" in the post is not listed by name on either the Surprise, Arizona, police department or county sheriff's department websites. The person who posted the story blotted out the…

Did 46 of 50 states recount their votes from the 2020 election and confirm that Joe Biden lost the vote in their state? No, that's not true: There were four states that conducted recounts or had legal challenges of the 2020 presidential election results, and none overturned the results that Biden won the presidential election against Donald Trump in 2020.…

Did 2 million voters register without a photo ID in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Texas during the first three months of 2024? No, that's not true: Election officials from these three states told Lead Stories that this figure from a social media post does not represent the number of new voters actually registered in their states without a photo ID during…

by: Ed Payne and Alexis Tereszcuk Does a 32-page report shared online in January of 2023 provide proof of widespread 2020 election fraud in five swing states? No, that's not true: The report lacks credible nonpartisan documentation or verifiable data that would substantiate such a sweeping assertion. It promotes a repeatedly disproven assertion that "hundreds of thousands of votes were…

Was there a massive vote discrepancy found in the 2022 Arizona midterm election? No, that's not true: An election expert told Lead Stories the claims of vote discrepancy were "100% false." The Arizona Secretary of State spokesperson said the claim falsely used a "static" voter registration list versus a list that showed accurate updates from election day that provides information…

Does a post show "new video evidence" of Maricopa County election officials breaking into sealed election machines? No, that's not true: The "new" video is a recording of a 2022 public live stream of the Maricopa County, Arizona, election headquarters where workers were installing new memory cards into the ballot tabulators prior to the November 2022 election, the spokesperson for…

Do social media posts about people "desperately trying to find the parents" of a lost "sweet girl" show a real-life call for help? No, that's not true: Entries with identical wording appeared in many places in the United States; as they gained traction, the content of those posts changed to promote dubious rent-to-own schemes and extract personal information. A sheriff's…