Election Disinformation

Is "Big Tech" letting child porn distributors freely operate while restricting people who post content that companies like Amazon and Facebook consider to be dangerous falsehoods? No, that's not how it works: No one owns the internet, which is a network of connected computers on which the World Wide Web operates via a common programming code that allows users to…

Did someone hack into the electronic voting system being used in Georgia for the January 5, 2020, U.S. Senate runoff races? No, Georgia election officials say that's not true: The digital poll book was not even in use on December 30, 2020, the day J. Hutton Pulitzer told lawmakers he had hacked his way into it. On two occasions since…

Is Joe Biden's sister married to Stephen Owens, whose company owns Dominion Voting Systems? No, that's not true: Valerie Biden Owens is not married to Stephen Owens, according to a Dominion spokeswoman and numerous news accounts about the Biden family. Biden's only sister is married to John (Jack) Owens, who owns a Delaware-based telemedicine company, according to The Washington Post…

Were 50,000 Chinese soldiers bombed and killed in Maine -- with the incident "listed as an earthquake"? No, that's not true: there was a minor earthquake in Maine on December 9, 2020, but there was no bomb involved and there weren't 50,000 Chinese soldiers killed. Military and local officials debunked the claim, with a Department of Defense official telling Lead…

Did Donald Trump's campaign gain control of voting machines in a small Georgia county and run tests that showed votes were flipped from Trump to Biden? No, that's not true: Articles and social media posts making the claim say the voting machines in Ware County, Georgia, were taken by the "Trump Team" for study and that they proved a flip…

Did The Department Of Homeland Security craft an election fraud sting by printing watermarked ballots? No, that's not true: The design, printing and auditing of ballots are processes managed by state and local election officials. One of many versions of this rumor appeared when it was uploaded to Facebook in a post (archived here) published on November 5, 2020, with…

Did the Department of Homeland Security issue a private "press release" through "AP OneWire" that was then leaked through the website treeofliberty.me? No, that's not true: The AP (Associated Press worldwide news organization) does not have a product called OneWire. The DHS could not have issued a press release through an Associated Press service that does not exist. The claim…

Are the Sunrise Movement, Black Lives Matter, other left-leaning organizations and the Democratic Party caught on tape coordinating a coup if President Trump wins re-election, including the takeover of government buildings like the White House along with transportation hubs and key U.S. cities? No, this is not true. Sunrise, an anti-Trump climate-change movement, told Lead Stories its Zoom meetings were…

Did Facebook ban this "President Trump campaign ad"? No, that's not true. It goes without saying that videos playing on a platform proclaiming they are banned by that platform have not been banned. Those behind such posts use them as a way to profit from online traffic. This example is not A Trump 2020 campaign ad. It does not carry…

Abbie Richards, a climate science student in the Netherlands, was looking with bewilderment at the state of her home country of the United States. So many conspiracy theories echoing, particularly ahead of the election. Struggling to wrangle all of them for a paper, she made a chart naming some 100 conspiracies dominating the social media world to, she hoped, make…