Did 46 of 50 states recount their votes from the 2020 election and confirm that Joe Biden lost the vote in their state? No, that's not true: There were four states that conducted recounts or had legal challenges of the 2020 presidential election results, and none overturned the results that Biden won the presidential election against Donald Trump in 2020. There is no evidence that 46 states conducted recounts of the 2020 presidential election results and found that Trump beat Biden.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Telegram on December 11, 2022, but reappeared amid the 2024 presidential election season. It began:
SCREENSHOT BEFORE THIS GETS DELETED
46 of 50 states have now recounted and CONFIRMED that Biden lost the vote in their state. The media has not said ANYTHING about this and continues to ignore it
This is what the post looked like on Telegram at the time of writing:
(Source: Telegram screenshot taken on Thu Apr 25 15:12:54 2024 UTC)
The post did not name any of the 46 states purportedly recounting their vote, nor did it cite any sources for the claim.
In 2020, there were four states that conducted recounts of their presidential election results -- Arizona, Georgia, Texas and Wisconsin. There is no evidence that any of the other 46 states conducted recounts of their 2020 election results and found that Trump had won over Biden.
Biden received the most Electoral College votes, with 306 to Trump's 232, which was certified by Congress (archived here). According to the U.S. Constitution's 20th Amendment, a president's four-year term ends at noon EST on January 20; the term of the next president then begins at 12:01 p.m. EST on January 20. Joe Biden became president on January 20, 2021.
Here is a breakdown of the four states that conducted recounts:
Arizona
As Lead Stories previously reported, the GOP-led recount confirmed Biden won Arizona.
The results of the GOP-commissioned audit, which can be seen here (archived here), do not show that Trump won Arizona. In fact, the audit shows the opposite: It turned up 99 more votes for Biden and 261 fewer votes for Trump, as compared to the official count by county election officials. Biden won Maricopa County by nearly 45,000 votes. He won Arizona by close to 10,500 votes.
Nowhere in the report from Cyber Ninjas, the company hired to do the audit, does it say that Trump won the vote in Arizona.
Georgia
Lead Stories has previously reported on the Georgia election results here. In 2020, the secretary of state (archived here) reported that Biden won in Georgia; Biden also prevailed in Fulton County, according to the county's official vote results (archived here).
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims about Georgia and the 2020 election and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger can be found here. Our debunks of claims concerning Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp can be read here.
The votes in the 2020 general election in Fulton County, Georgia, were counted three times: on election night, in an audit and in a recount, the Fulton County election manager told Lead Stories
Wisconsin
Dane County and Milwaukee County both recounted their presidential ballots. Each recount confirmed that Biden won, as Dane County clerk Scott McDonell (archived here) told Lead Stories via email on April 25, 2024:
The recount confirmed the results of the election here in Dane County and Milwaukee County.
The Trump campaign itself acknowledged that fact (archived here).
The subsequent court case to overturn the results failed (archived here) at the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Texas
The Texas Secretary of State Executive Summary Audit of the 2020 General Election (archived here) in Texas was published in December 2022 and did not overturn the election. Trump won the state but had asked for an audit of Harris, Dallas, Tarrant and Collins counties, the most populous in the state.
In April 2022, Reuters debunked the same claim about 46 of 50 states recounting the ballots from the 2020 presidential election with the results showing Biden lost to Trump.
Other Lead Stories fact checks about Joe Biden can be found here and Donald Trump can be found here.
