Election

Dan Mac Guill has been a fact checker and claim selection supervisor at Lead Stories since August 2022. He is from Dublin, Ireland, and worked as a reporter for TheJournal.ie from 2014-16, before helping to establish the Republic of Ireland's first fully-dedicated fact-checking service, for that outlet. From 2017 to 2022, he wrote for the fact checking and debunking website…

Does a video show election workers in Clark County, Washington, illegally closing ballot drop boxes "30 minutes prior" to the voting close time, insinuating that there is fraudulent activity involved with voter mail-in ballots? No, that's not true: The video shows a certified election worker giving a voter the appropriate legal options to submit their mail-in ballot. The Clark County…

Do election ballots have serial numbers to protect against voter fraud? Yes, that's true, but those numbers are removed during processing to protect the identity of the voter. In an email to Lead Stories, Christopher B. Mann, an associate professor of political science at Skidmore College in New York, said, "Putting serial numbers on ballots is a good idea that…

Did Dominion voting machines fail testing for a primary recount in the race for Colorado secretary of state? No, that's not true: Dominion Voting Systems, the Colorado secretary of state's office and the El Paso County clerk and recorder's office all told Lead Stories that the machines passed testing. "This system did exactly as it should, worked properly, and the…

Does Ray Epps' wife work for a company that owns Dominion Voting Systems? No, that's not true: Robyn Epps is the wife of Ray Epps, who has become a target of a conspiracy theory that claims that since he has not been arrested for participating in the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, he is therefore a government…

Did Michelle Obama register to vote as a man in 1994 in Illinois? No, that's not true: A public information officer at the Illinois State Board of Elections told Lead Stories that this claim is inaccurate. The document that is supposedly the former first lady's voter registration record did not come from the Board as an article falsely claims, and…

Do differences between an unofficial election data stream provided by Edison Research and official sources prove "Something Is Very Wrong" with the 2020 election results? No, that's not true: There is no evidence that anything is wrong with the official data even if there were problems with the privately supplied data results from Edison, which delivers unofficial vote tallies to…

Does this clip show election fraud happening on live television? No, that's not true: Edison Research, the sole provider of Election Day data to the National Election Pool, which provides numbers to news organizations, told Lead Stories the vote change cited in the post was due to a typo in Henderson County, Kentucky. The error was caught and corrected within…

Does an election night correction made to a private company's Colorado vote tallies prove the primary election was manipulated by dark forces? No, that's not true: There is no evidence the official results "stole" votes from Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters to increase the total for another GOP secretary of state candidate during the June 28, 2021, primary election in…

Does this video's video clips show Democrats are going to use "abortion tents" or "abortion vouchers" to assist with abortions? No, that's not true: Following the demise of Roe v. Wade, some Democratic legislators and leaders offered a range of suggestions, including the use of federal land for abortion access and assistance with transportation to receive reproductive health care. However,…