Did the United States have an election with 133 million registered voters in which 159 million votes were cast? No, that's not true: Official government figures for national elections do not support that claim. More than 158 million Americans cast ballots in the 2020 presidential election, but more than 168 million were registered to vote.
The claim appeared in a post and image (archived here) by the @travelingflying account on X on May 3, 2026. The one-cell comic read:
White student: America has 133 million registered voters.. How could 159 million votes be cast?
Black teacher: That's not important. What's important is that you're a racist.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @travelingflying on X.com.)
The post does not specify which election it refers to, but only recent presidential elections have attracted a comparable number of voters. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) maintains official statistics on national elections. The figures cited in the social media post -- 133 million registered voters and 159 million votes cast -- do not match any year in U.S. election history.
In the 2024 presidential election (archived here) between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, 155,238,302 total votes were cast, according to the FEC. In the 2020 election (archived here) between Trump and Joe Biden, 158,383,403 people voted, the commission said.
Voter registration tables compiled by the Census Bureau show 173,854,000 were registered to vote for the 2024 election (archived here) and 168,308,000 in the 2020 election (archived here). Both figures are well above the number of people who voted in each election.
Voter registration numbers (archived here), based on Census Bureau statistics, are embedded below:
The last time the number of registered voters in the United States was less than 133 million, the number flagged in the social media post, was 2000. That year (archived here), 105 million voted in the presidential election, and there were 129 million registered to vote:
(Image source: Statista website.)
