Fact checking Election Day 2024 claims about voter fraud, ballot counting and more

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Fact checking Election Day 2024 claims about voter ******, ballot counting and more

Throughout Election Day and night, CBS News’ Confirmed team will be fact checking reports of threats around voting today, voter ******, election hacking, and more as the nation votes and waits to see whether Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump will be the 47th president of the ******* States., CBS News’ full coverage of the election is here.

False: Elon Musk claimed

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intentionally manipulating search results in favor of Harris 

X owner Elon Musk 

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, then deleted, a screen recording comparing the

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searches. The post reached over 2.5 million views before its removal, with other posts garnering thousands of views.

Details:

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 searches for “where to vote for Harris” yielded a polling location map because Harris is also the name of a county in Texas, not because of bias for the Democratic candidate.

Searching for “where to vote for Trump” returned news articles and standard search results, while “where to vote for Vance” produced a similar polling locations map because Vance is the name of a county in North Carolina.

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adjusted its algorithm Tuesday to prevent candidate-related queries from returning polling maps. 

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 show that searching “where to vote” is a much more common query than searching where to vote for either Trump or Harris.

By Julia Ingram and Layla Ferris

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False: Social media posts claim Milwaukee mayor, a Democrat, said the city’s votes would not be counted on election night

On X, users claimed that the Democratic mayor of Milwaukee said at a news conference that Milwaukee would not be counting ballots tonight.

Details: Votes in Milwaukee will be tabulated tonight despite posts on the social media platform X that have pushed a false claim that Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said votes in the city won’t be counted on election night.

In reality, vote counting started Tuesday morning and will continue late into Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning at the city’s so-called “central count” location, according to Johnson’s communications director, Jeff Fleming.
“They’ve already started tabulating, and had tabulated thousands of ballots by this afternoon,” Fleming said. “The vote totals exceeded our original projections, so the workload at central count is higher than expected.”

Milwaukee’s votes can take longer to count for several reasons, Barry Burden, Director of the University of Wisconsin’s Elections Research Center, said.

“It’s the biggest city, and it has the most ballots, and it also counts absentee ballots at a central location,” Burden said. “That’ll be after midnight, 1 (a.m.) or 2 a.m.”

The city’s more than 200 election workers started counting votes at 9 a.m. Tuesday morning, Fleming said. They’ll continue the tabulation overnight, and ballots will be delivered to county clerks either the next day or the day after, depending on local rules.

By Chris Hacker

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Spreadsheet error corrected: GOP U.S. House candidate says Harris County, Texas, early vote results showed big drops and spikes in early voting

U.S. House candidate Caroline Kane, a *********** running in Texas’ 7th District, posted on

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Monday that Harris County’s early vote results showed significant drops and spikes in the number of early voters for several voting locations between Sunday and Monday, which should not be possible.

Details: Election officials said a misaligned spreadsheet caused the publicly reported early vote totals in Harris County to appear incorrectly. Local officials have corrected the document posted online by Kane. They noted the spreadsheet was labeled “unofficial” and said the error would not impact the official vote tally.

In a statement, the Office of the Harris County Clerk said, “In the process of updating the daily record of early vote totals for two vote centers (Baytown Community Center and Mission Bend Center), the formatting of the spreadsheet inadvertently misaligned, causing cells to shift and reflect incorrect numbers for other locations. Our office is aware and is actively working to correct the report.”

“I assure you that every vote that was cast will be accurately tallied,” the statement from the clerk’s office concluded.

By Jui Sarwate

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Software malfunction prevented some voters from scanning ballots in Cambria County, Pennsylvania. Voting hours extended to 10 p.m. in the county.

Details: Local courts have extended voting hours from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. in Cambria County, Pennsylvania after local officials said a “software malfunction” prevented voters from scanning their ballots early Tuesday morning.

Voters are using paper ballots as technicians review the issue. 

“All votes will be counted and we continue to encourage everyone to vote,” the county commissioner’s office said in a press release.

According to the county’s 

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 to extend voting hours, the malfunction “caused voter confusion, long lines of voters, and many individuals left the polling locations without casting a ballot.

“The Pennsylvania Department of State 

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 it is in contact with Cambria County and is “committed to ensuring a free, fair, safe, and secure election.”

Cambria County, located in southwestern Pennsylvania, has a population of approximately 131,000. Trump won the county 68% to 31% in 2020, and he won by a similar margin in 2016.

By Steve Reilly, Julia Ingram, Layla Ferris

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False: Non-citizens encouraged to vote in Philadelphia

************* commentator James O’Keefe claimed non-citizens are being encouraged to vote in Philadelphia.

Details: Philadelphia officials said 

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 by commentator James O’Keefe that non-citizens are being encouraged to vote are incorrect. O’Keefe posted a new video on Monday claiming Election Clerk Milton Jamerson and Ceiba, a local non-profit, advised voting with an ITIN number, regardless of citizenship.

The video received 1.6 million views on X as of Tuesday, and was reposted by *********** theorist Alex Jones, who 

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 it was “the smoking **** of attempted election theft.”

Philadelphia City Commissioner Seth Bluestein 

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 the report was incorrect and non-citizens are not eligible to vote in Philadelphia. ITINs are for tax purposes and not linked to voting eligibility. Ceiba 

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 O’Keefe’s claims “unfounded and based on harmful stereotypes.”

By Joanne Stocker and Emmet Lyons

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Layla Ferris

Layla Ferris is a verification producer with CBS News Confirmed. She previously worked at ABC News and Storyful. She specializes in breaking news coverage, visual verification and open-source research.

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#Fact #checking #Election #Day #claims #voter #****** #ballot #counting

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