rumors and intox around the counting of votes

The 2020 US presidential election, the result of which was not yet known Thursday, November 5, brought its share of rumors and suspicions about the good conduct of the poll. These generally all go in the same direction: taking up an argument launched very early on by Donald Trump, they accuse the Democratic camp of rigging the election to lose the current president.

Article reserved for our subscribers Read also American elections 2020: on social networks, pro-Trump convinced of “electoral theft”

What the rumor says

The vote curve in favor of Democratic candidate Joe Biden is characterized by steep surges, vertically, a sign that the ballot was rigged to push it up suddenly. At least that’s what the French relays of the Republican candidate believe. “Democrats, when you cheat please be discreet”, calls out Damien Rieu, figure of the French fascosphere. Magistrate Charles Prats, former supporter of François Fillon, suggests a special trick too, ” neither seen nor known “, in a Tweet that uses the same graphics.

MISLEADING

These two graphics showing a dramatic comeback are authentic. They were posted by reporters from FiveThirtyEight, a leading US political analysis site, on their election monitoring blog.

This curve is due to a statistical bias: instead of gradually spanning the ballots as the day goes on, some States publish the results in spurts, while at the same time showing a very large number of votes counted, hence this leap. But these sudden increases do not benefit the Democratic camp alone, Curt Villarosa, public affairs manager for ABC News, the media owner of FiveThirtyEight, to the American verification site Politifact: “Not all were 100% for Biden. Below the blue line, there is also a red line representing the thousands of votes for Trump. There are also counter-examples where the Trump curve suddenly explodes when a batch of favorable votes is taken into account. “

Indeed, other graphics published by FiveThirtyEight allow to find the same phenomenon of sudden rise of the curve. This is decorrelated from the candidate.

Thus in Iowa (IA on the graph), Biden like Trump saw their number of votes explode in almost equal proportions in the middle of the day, and relatively similar at the start of the day in Kansas (KS). In Montana (MT), the late batches were more in Trump’s favor, resulting in vertical leaps in the incumbent president’s curve.

  • Ballots in favor of Donald Trump thrown or burned

What the rumor says

While Donald Trump denounced a “Massive fraud” and affirmed that a “Group of lousy people” sought to steal the election from him, online publications claim to have proof. As this video viral, tweeted by Eric Trump, the son of the US president, showing a man deliberately setting eighty pro-Trump ballots on fire.

Another rumor has also circulated that 40,000 ballots from Dekalb County (Georgia) were dropped from the ballot. Another video hugely shared in US conspiracy circles shows members of a US polling station throwing ballots in the trash.

FALSE

While the outcome of the US election remains uncertain, nothing can corroborate Donald Trump’s accusations of fraud. The examples cited above, relayed in number by the supporters of the outgoing American president, are false. Like the video of a man proudly burning pro-Trump ballots. In reality, these bulletins are samples which are not used for voting. Eric Trump, he still has not deleted his Tweet.

The rumor about the 40,000 unaccounted for ballots in Georgia is also infox. On Twitter, Dekalb County called this information“Wrong” and explained that only two hundred ballots, not forty thousand, had been provisionally set aside. Each of the voters concerned will be contacted to confirm the votes, the county assured.

  • Shady influx of 100% votes for Biden

What the rumor says

Biden benefited from a sudden influx of more than 100,000 votes into Michigan on November 10.  Evidence of manipulation, some believe.  The error has been corrected.

Another recurring element of speech is wonder that entire batches of votes are entirely in favor of the former vice president, as in Michigan, where Joe Biden was credited with more than 138,339 votes. a knock. A statistical anomaly which would prove an electoral scheming.

Several pro-Republican accounts are outraged, such as Brandon Morse, contributor to the conservative Red State site. “Welcome to the People’s Republican of Michiganzuela, where mysteriously, each of the more than 100,000 registered postal bulletins were all for Joe Biden! “, he quips by giving Michigan the nickname of an oil dictatorship. This insinuation of fraud was picked up in France by an influential far-right disinformation site, Europe Israel, and its president Jean-Marc Moscowitz.

TRUE, BUT THE ERROR HAS BEEN CORRECTED

The card circulating is that of Decision Desk HQ, an election results aggregation company. This one recognized an entry error in the data sent by the State of Michigan.

The precise origin of the error was been spotted by an internet user : in Shiawassee County (68,122 inhabitants), Joe Biden was credited with 153,710 votes (note the zero at the end) instead of 15,371. Between the two digits, a differential of 138,339, which is exactly the number of erroneous ballots attributed at Michigan level to Joe Biden. “It happens on election nights and we believe other Michigan vote aggregators have encountered the same error and corrected it in real time like we did.”, justified a spokesperson at BuzzFeed.

The results have since been corrected. Despite this, the Democratic candidate still won the sixteen major voters in Michigan by a short head. The current tenant of the White House has announced that he will file an appeal to challenge the result.

Our selection of articles on the presidential election in the United States

Find the campaign chronicles of our correspondent in Washington here.

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