Factchecking the most pervasive myths and lies about US elections

Illustration: Angelica Alzona/Guardian Design

The conspiracy theory that the 2020 was stolen is now mainstream on the right. Believers are undeterred by the fact that the election was free and fair and the lack of evidence of fraud. Those who seek to correct the misinformation become targets of Donald Trump and his allies.

As Trump runs for re-election, he has laid the groundwork to make a bevy of stolen election claims after 5 November, many of which are retreads of those made in 2020 or other elections. They include the false claim that non-citizens are voting in broad numbers, attacks on the voting and counting process, misunderstandings of how elections work and opportunism when human errors occur.

If Trump wins, these lies could be used to target down-ballot races. If Trump loses, election lies could reach levels seen in 2020 – or beyond.

Trump has not committed to accepting the results of the 2024 election. “If I lose – I’ll tell you what, it’s possible. Because they cheat. That’s the only way we’re gonna lose, because they cheat,” Trump said during a rally in September.

Here is a rundown of some of the most pervasive myths about elections, how they are run and who votes in them.

Non-citizens

Republicans, led by Trump and his allies, have repeatedly claimed without evidence that non-citizens are voting en masse in US elections. It is illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections. States verify citizenship, and voting illegally could lead to deportation. Still, people such as Elon Musk have elevated these falsehoods, claiming that Democrats are trying to “import voters”.

There is no evidence that non-citizens are voting, or even registering to vote, in significant numbers. Republicans have tried to get around that lack of evidence by relying on gut feelings. “We all know – intuitively – that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections. But it’s not been something that is easily provable,” the House speaker, Mike Johnson, said as he pushed for legislation to address the non-problem.

In the run-up to November, some states have sought to purge their voter rolls of potential non-citizens, though these purges have run into legal trouble for discriminating against a group of voters or for attempting to remove voters within 90 days of an election, which is not legal. And the purges have ensnared eligible voters, both naturalized citizens and US-born ones.

The Republican National Committee has filed lawsuits in some states claiming the voter rolls were not maintained and could contain non-citizens, though experts say the attacks on voter rolls appear more designed for publicity purposes than serious legal concerns.

Voting machines and hand counts

Since the 2020 election, claims have continued to spread that machines used to tabulate votes somehow injected ballots in favor of Democrats, though no proof has been offered to support these claims. These attacks may well emerge again in 2024. Already, an account on X with nearly 250,000 followers wrote that Democrats were going to steal the election by printing “MILLIONS of fake ballots” and then unloading “PALLETS of BALLOTS and run them through the machines”. The post was viewed more than 4m times.

Repeated attacks on voting machines have led the companies that make them, including Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, to file lawsuits against media outlets that spread these lies, resulting in settlements against the outlets, including one for $787.5m against Fox News.

In some places, there has been a push for hand-counting ballots – a costlier, slower and less accurate method of tabulation.

A group of hand-count supporters has toured the country trying to get local jurisdictions to adopt the practice, with limited success in some smaller areas. A rule change in Georgia to hand-count ballots was blocked by a judge there.

Certification

A key way election deniers could seek to overturn results in November is through the certification process.

In US elections, local elections officials oversee the counting of ballots, often referred to as the canvass. County or town elected officials then sign off on those results in what is known as a certification. The role of these county or town officials is to acknowledge the count, not act as a referee. This function is mandatory, not discretionary.

Across the country, there have been a few instances of officials refusing to certify results. In Georgia, some election officials refused to certify results in this year’s presidential primary. In Cochise county, Arizona, two Republican county supervisors initially refused to certify, requiring a court to order them to do so, after which one of the two reversed her vote. Those supervisors were criminally charged by the state’s Democratic attorney general in part to deter others from trying a similar stunt.

Delaying a certification could disenfranchise voters whose elected officials refused to acknowledge their votes were cast. Courts have uniformly responded to force certification in the instances where it was refused or delayed since 2020, but these delays undermine the electoral process and can be costly.

Overseas voters

Trump and rightwing media, including Gateway Pundit, a site that is particularly prolific in the realm of election misinformation, have claimed that Democrats are trying to cheat by getting overseas US citizens to vote. But this is legal.

Nearly 3 million people who live abroad, including US military members and their families, are eligible to vote via the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act.

Democrats have estimated a much higher number, saying in a memo that 9 million Americans abroad could be eligible to vote. This set off rumors that Democrats were planning to fraudulently register people, and that this could become an avenue for foreign interference in elections. The Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington broke down how the rumor spread and debunked it.

(According to the University of Washington, the Democrats’ claim of 9 million eligible voters was “erroneous”.)

Methods of voting

Trump and his allies have often attacked voting by mail, saying it isn’t secure. They have also attacked drop boxes that allow voters to deposit their ballots quickly and easily. Some have pushed for one day of voting, only in person, which would greatly curtail voter access.

In Arizona in 2022, some activists camped out at drop boxes, some armed or in tactical gear, to monitor people dropping off ballots, until the courts curtailed the practice.

But this year, Trump and the Republican party have changed course and encouraged their voters to turn out early and cast ballots by mail if it’s their preference, a sign that they were losing votes by discouraging these practices.

Still, if Trump loses, he could again claim that voting by mail, the use of drop boxes or early voting in general are compromised by fraud.

Human errors and unexpected controversies

Every election sees human errors, most of which do not affect people’s ability to vote or vote totals. But these errors can become sources of misinformation, as can benign circumstances that are spun into controversies.

If recent history is any precedent, prepare for some kind of pen debacle.

In 2020, and to a lesser extent in the 2022 midterms, the type of pens given out to voters in Maricopa county, Arizona, figured in a number of conspiracies. Dubbed “Sharpiegate” in 2020, the use of Sharpies did not affect people’s votes, though some on the right spread this claim because the markers can bleed through and leave a mark on the other side of a two-sided ballot. (This doesn’t affect how a vote is read by a tabulator.)

In 2022, the county switched to a different felt-tip pen, but for some, it didn’t matter: they still encouraged voters not to use the county-provided pens, even though those pens were best for the printers and prevented ink from gumming up machines.

Legitimate errors can also lead to outsized criticism. In Minnesota this month, the hatch of a ballot transport van was left open and unattended, with ballots in it, for about 10 minutes. The ballots were undisturbed, security footage showed, but a photo of the open van spread widely, causing controversy.

The Minnesota secretary of state, Scott Simon, a Democrat, said the incident was “inexcusable and totally unacceptable”, and his office sent a bulletin out to local elections officials to remind them to double down on security, he said.

“All it takes is one sloppy, inattentive person to call into question the really good and conscientious work of thousands and thousands of people,” he told the Guardian. “So it’s frustrating to see, but we’re trying to make it a teachable moment in our office.”

‘Delays’ and recounts

Vote counting takes time. US elections are complex – in some places, ballots can run longer than a page, with voters weighing in on races from president down to school boards. Verifying signatures on mail-in ballots, used widely in some states, can take days. In a fast-paced society, the slow pace of counting accurately can surely be frustrating.

And in places where elections are especially close, all eyes will be watching as the vote-counting continues well beyond election day. Claims might emerge about how these slow counts are somehow indicative of fraud.

This could be especially true in Arizona, which has close races and particularly large counties. Lawmakers there have also altered the recount threshold since the 2020 election – now, an automatic recount is triggered if a race is within 0.5%, up from 0.1%. This led to several recounts in the 2022 midterms, including for the state attorney general. Depending on how close the presidential race or other key matchups are, these recounts could become a source for misinformation.

Republicans have pressed for faster results as well as for more checks on the voting process, two ideas that are frequently at odds. Trump has used the window between the end of voting and the finalization of results to declare victory in the past. In 2020, he planned in advance to call himself the winner even if it wasn’t clear he actually was, Axios reported at the time.

As votes are counted, one candidate may replace another in the lead. This is not evidence that ballots have somehow been injected, as has sometimes been alleged. It is rather the function of how counting works: as more ballots are tabulated, totals change.