Fact Check: Wisconsin Poll Worker Was NOT Caught 'Rigging Ballots On Live TV'

Fact Check

  • by: Marlo Lee
Fact Check: Wisconsin Poll Worker Was NOT Caught 'Rigging Ballots On Live TV' Routine Work

Did a poll worker in Dane County, Wisconsin get caught rigging ballots on live television? No, that's not true: The Dane County Clerk, whose office records election information, explained that this poll worker was doing routine work, preparing ballots to pass out to voters.

The claim appeared in a Facebook post on November 8, 2022, with the caption "Rigging ballots on live TV." A voice belonging to a person off-camera says:

Look at this. What is he marking? What is he doing, flipping through ballots?

This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:

Screen Shot 2022-11-10 at 12.02.27 PM.png

Facebook screenshot(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Thu Nov 10 16:55:38 2022 UTC)

The 24-second Facebook video was a recording of B-roll footage playing on Fox News. In the footage, a poll worker is sitting at a table and is seen marking a ballot. The person recording Fox News playing on a TV implies that this poll worker is participating in election fraud.

Scott McDonell, Wisconsin's Dane County Clerk, responded to this claim in a November 8, 2022, tweet. He wrote that the poll worker is doing "boring routine work" with the ballots:

This poll worker is doing the boring routine work of initialing ballots and circling the ward number to hand to voters so they can vote. What a scandal.

Additional Lead Stories fact checks of election-fraud claims can be found here, here and here.

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Marlo Lee is a fact checker at Lead Stories. She is a graduate of Howard University with a B.S. in Biology. Her interest in fact checking started in college, when she realized how important it became in American politics. She lives in Maryland.

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