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Millions of Democratic votes were sent into a “black hole”? It’s Pants on Fire!
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Millions of Democratic votes were sent into a “black hole”? It’s Pants on Fire!

After major media outlets announced President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election, some social media users questioned the results.

“I think these votes are gone,” one user said job November 6 on Threads. “I think they found a way to target Democratic precincts and send millions of votes into a black hole. The numbers don’t add up. How could there be record turnout in early voting and a considerable drop in the vote total? It doesn’t make sense.

The post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat fake news and misinformation on its feed. (Learn more about our partnership with Metawhich owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

In 2020, President Joe Biden won the popular vote with more than 81 million votes. Trump got 74 million. Votes for the 2024 elections were still underway counted As of November 7, but as of 4 p.m. EST, Trump had more than 72 million votes to Vice President Kamala Harris’ 68 million.

The difference in votes between the 2020 and 2024 elections does not constitute evidence of fraud. Just as there was none in 2020, there is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2024 election.

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“Our election infrastructure has never been more secure, and the elections community has never been more prepared to deliver safe, secure, free and fair elections for the American people,” said Director of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Jen Easterly, in a November 6 press release. statement. “This is what we saw yesterday in the peaceful and secure exercise of democracy. Importantly, we have no evidence of any malicious activity having materially impacted the security or integrity of our infrastructure electoral.”

Ballots are still being counted

Although the media called a winner based on existing tallies and electoral gains, it remains unclear exactly how many votes each candidate received and how those results compare to the 2020 election.

“Indeed, in some states, election officials may continue to accept absentee ballots or mail-in ballots that were postmarked on Election Day and are delivered in the next few days, so we don’t even know not yet the total number of votes cast,” said Michael Morley, an election law professor at Florida State University.

Each state has different deadlines to complete the counting of votes, which extends from one to four weeks after election day. Once states complete their count, they must certify the results. These deadlines fall in November and December.

Just as the final vote tally for each candidate is currently unknown, so is turnout for the 2024 elections.

“We won’t have a complete picture of voter turnout comparisons between elections until every state provides certified turnout files,” said Carolina Lopez, executive director of the Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions, a nonpartisan organization which works with election officials in jurisdictions with 300,000 people or more.

It is also memorable that the 2020 elections saw record turnout. According to the United States Census Bureau67% of citizens aged 18 or over said they had voted. A Washington Post analysis showed that voter turnout in 2024 is on track to be close to that of 2020.

Early voter turnout is not an indicator of who won the election

In the weeks leading up to Election Day, local news organizations reported record early voter turnout in various states. By November 4, the day before Election Day, more than 78 million ballots had been cast in 42 states and Washington, D.C., according to CNN. analysis. In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, 110 million people voted early, in person or by mail, according to CNN.

But a high number of voters does not indicate a fraudulent Trump victory. Not all of the millions of early voters voted for Harris. It is also difficult to draw conclusions about voter behavior in the 2024 elections when comparing them to those of 2020, where Trump discouraged early and absentee voting.

“Republican messaging around mail-in voting and absentee voting has changed this election cycle,” Morley said, adding that Republicans encouraged early and mail-in voting. “As a result, we expect the partisan distribution of voters using these voting methods to have changed between the 2020 and 2024 elections.”

Our decision

One social media user said: “I think they found a way to target Democratic precincts and send millions of votes into a black hole. The numbers don’t add up.”

However, just as there was no widespread voter fraud in 2020, there is no evidence of it in the 2024 election.

Ballots are still being counted, so it’s unclear how many votes each candidate received and how those results compare to the 2020 election.

Millions of people voted early, setting records in some states. But these early voters could have supported Trump, Harris, a third-party candidate or chosen not to vote in the presidential election at all.

We are reviewing the article Pants on Fire!