Election

Did Univision "accidentally broadcast proof" that Kamala Harris was reading scripted responses from a teleprompter during her live town hall on the network? No, that's not true: Univision's footage repeatedly shows Harris responding to questions from the audience when there was no teleprompter nearby. Both the town hall moderator, Enrique Acevedo, and Univision News President Daniel Coronell have posted statements…

Do viral images authentically capture the massive destruction caused by Hurricane Milton at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida? No, that's not true: Those pictures were generated by AI and first posted on a website with a satire label. On October 11, 2024, Disney announced it had reopened its theme parks. The claim appeared in a video (archived here)…

Did Oregon officials omit Donald Trump from a voters' pamphlet about candidates in the 2024 election for political reasons? No, that's not true: Trump's campaign chose not to submit information for the pamphlet, according to a statement from the Oregon GOP. A spokeswoman for Oregon's Secretary of State told Lead Stories that their office contacted the Trump campaign multiple times…

Did Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson say that noncitizens would be allowed to vote in the 2024 elections? No, that's not true: There's no evidence that Nelson opened voting to non-U.S. citizens. In an October 2024 election advisory, the Secretary of State's Office clarified that naturalized citizens already on the voting rolls could use a limited-term driver's license or…

Was voter turnout above 100 percent in 2020 in some precincts of Henrico County, Virginia? No, that's not true: Data in a social media post inaccurately added county-level absentee ballots to precinct counts using a mathematical estimate. The county director of elections told Lead Stories that the assertion about impossible turnouts is "incorrect." Counties are not concealing precinct data by…

Does a video show fenced-in elk escaping a wildfire in Wyoming in 2024? No, that's not true: The video on X shows three elk fleeing a wildfire in Montana in 2021. The person who made the video located it in Big Horn County, Montana, in a 2021 Facebook post. The video appeared in a post (archived here) on X on…

Do public documents about an alleged plot to carry out a terror attack on behalf of ISIS on U.S. Election Day reveal that a mobile device "visited" the home of one of the suspects and "also visited Senator Lankford's office on 3 occasions"? No, that's not true: No publicly available official documents said that. Though the post includes a press…

Does a photo in an online article prove that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy bought Hitler's Mercedes during his 2024 trip to the United States? No, that's not true: The article's image of the vehicle, supposedly in front of the Ukrainian presidential administration building, was digitally manipulated. The picture of this antique car has been online since 2018 and was first…

Is a dramatic photo of a tearful young girl in a boat clutching a puppy after Hurricane Helene real? No, that's not true: The AI detector TrueMedia found "substantial evidence" that the image was created using an AI image generator. There is also no evidence the photo appeared in any news coverage about the rescue efforts after the storm nor…

Were 200 or as many as 2,000 people found stranded after Hurricane Helene in a church in Candler, North Carolina, after six days without food? No, that's not true: The communications and public engagement director for that county told Lead Stories, "This is unequivocally untrue." Churches in the area are acting as distribution points for emergency supplies. The meme that…