Election Fraud

Does the movie "2000 Mules" prove the 2020 presidential election was stolen by voter fraud? No, that's not true: The film's producers promote a theory that 2,000 people in five key swing states collected and delivered hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots on behalf of a "cartel" to throw the election in favor of Joe Biden. The cellphone geotracking data…

Did former U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy say he saw the movie "2000 Mules" at Mar-a-Lago and that he "always believed that rampant cheating occurred" in the 2020 election? No, that's not true: The Republican from South Carolina told Lead Stories both claims are "100 percent false." The claim appeared in a Facebook post (archived here) by the account Trey Gowdy…

Did a French television station's display showing French President Emmanuel Macron behind 217,571 votes prove election fraud? No, that's not true: An election night broadcast that aired numbers showing Macron behind opponent Marine Le Pen was a glitch in the software used by a French TV station to tally votes with numbers directly from the Ministry of the Interior. It…

Did the "Bombshell" report published by Mike Lindell about Mesa County, Colorado, voting systems prove election machine manipulation? No, that's not true: The Colorado Secretary of State's Office, whose election security systems are called into question by the report, calls the analysis "unauthenticated hearsay." Independent of the state analysis, election and cybersecurity experts who reviewed Lindell's "Bombshell" report for Lead…

Is the relatively high number of registrations on November 2 and November 3, 2020, evidence of voter fraud in Michigan? No, that's not true: On Election Day alone, close to 32,000 people registered to vote in Michigan, according to officials. A spokeswoman for the Michigan secretary of state told Lead Stories that the registrations were legal and due to the…

Is there "shocking evidence of widespread fraud" in Wisconsin's voter database? No, that's not true: Responding to a slew of allegations, Wisconsin election officials pointed out that lists of inactive voters - who are not on poll books and cannot vote - were used to inflate claims about illegal voters. Another "fraud" example was easily explained by simply looking up…

Did the Wisconsin Assembly vote to withdraw Joe Biden's 10 electoral votes? No, that's not true: A Republican representative introduced a resolution that called for "reclaiming" the president's votes. The resolution was referred to an assembly committee, and the chair of that committee said there is "ZERO chance" he'll advance the resolution, which he alternately described as "illegal" and "just…

Did Wisconsin have an active voter turnout of 93.7% in 2020? No, that's not true. Wisconsin allows same-day registration and therefore calculates the voter turnout with the number of actual voters as a percentage of the voting-age population in the state. The turnout rate in the 2020 election was 72.69%. Lead Stories debunked a different incorrect Wisconsin voter turnout number…

Ms. Susan Wojcicki, It's been almost two years since the COVID-19 pandemic started. The world has seen time and time again how destructive disinformation and misinformation can be for social harmony, democracy, and public health; too many lives and livelihoods have been ruined, and far too many people have lost loved ones to disinformation. As an international network of fact-checking…