Arizona Election

Did the Arizona Senate bring indictments against Gov. Katie Hobbs, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, Runbeck Election Services, banks and local police for election fraud and other crimes? No, that's not true: The Arizona Senate is not authorized to issue indictments, the state Senate GOP spokesperson told Lead Stories. The video shown in the social-media post that made the claim…

Did Phoenix become the "first U.S. city" to prohibit "meat, dairy, private cars" in September 2023 at the directive of the World Economic Forum? No, that's not true: Had it been a real ban, it would have been officially announced on the government website of Phoenix, which has no traces of it. The claim stems from a misleading interpretation of…

Does the music video "Try That In A Small Town" by country music singer Jason Aldean only contain "real news footage," as he asserted in a public response to criticism that his song and video promote violence and allude to timeworn lynching threats? No, that's not true: Not every clip in the video is news footage. There are several stock…

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…

Did President Joe Biden confess in public that he "sold a lot of state secrets and a lot of very important things"? No, that's not true: He was kidding members of the White House press corps, and he said that in his own words, as confirmed by the White House transcript of the speech. The claim appeared in a post…

Are Americans required to register their private home gardens on the USDA website so the government can track what they're growing? No, that's not true: The U.S. Department of Agriculture created a program to support "community gardens" -- urban gardens that are open to the public -- by offering voluntary registration for those community gardens. They are not regulating private…

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…

Are lawmakers, judges and other public officials in Arizona taking bribes from the Sinaloa cartel and fixing elections? No, there's no reliable evidence that's true: Jacqueline Breger, an insurance agent who made the allegations during a joint meeting of the Arizona House and Senate elections committees on February 23, 2023, did not provide credible proof to back up her explosive…

Did nearly a quarter of a million voting attempts fail in the November 8, 2022, election in Arizona and did that impact the vote count? No, that's not true: The communications director for the Maricopa County Elections Department called the allegation "textbook disinformation." While many ballots were scanned and rescanned multiple times, the votes were ultimately counted. Arizona Secretary of…

The year is almost over, so it is good to look back. First, the numbers, as of December 15, 2022. This year we have published 1,555 fact checks in English (so far ...) 283 fact checks about COVID misinformation; 244 debunks of Russian propaganda and false claims about the invasion of Ukraine; 140 debunks of false claims about election fraud,…