A roundup of a few of the hottest but completely unfaithful stories and visuals of the week. None of those are legit, regardless that they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Listed below are the facts:
Split-ticket voting in Arizona isn’t an indication of fraud
CLAIM: The incontrovertible fact that incumbent Republican state treasurer Kimberly Yee got tens of hundreds more votes than GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake shows the Arizona election was rigged.
Political Cartoons
THE FACTS: While Yee did get more votes, that isn’t proof of fraud. Many Arizona voters, including Republicans and independents, have a history of voting for candidates from each political parties. That continued this cycle. But as Lake lost her gubernatorial bid to Democrat Katie Hobbs in Arizona on Monday, social media users baselessly suggested that the incontrovertible fact that Yee garnered more votes than Lake was an indication of manipulation. “It makes no mathematical sense that the GOP State Treasurer just won reelection by 250,000 votes, but none of those voters also felt like voting for Kari Lake,” one Twitter user wrote Monday in a tweet shared over 7,000 times. Removed from being an indication of election fraud, such leads to Arizona indicate that voters picked candidates from each political parties or voted in some races and never others, experts and political operatives say. Actually, such voter behavior was common in 2022 in elections across the country. “Split-ticket voters are quite common,” said Paul Bentz, a Republican pollster in Phoenix. “It happens the entire time. It speaks to the assorted strengths or drawbacks of a specific candidate.” Arizona voters particularly have a track record of not at all times voting along party lines. In 2018, many Arizona voters opted for Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, who was running for U.S. Senate, and incumbent Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, Bentz said. And on this election, Republican Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell fended off her Democratic challenger, outperforming Lake. Lake, Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters and Republican secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, all of whom lost, were all endorsed by Trump and promoted conspiracy theories concerning the 2020 election. Johnny Melton, acting chair of the Legislative District 29 Republicans in Maricopa County, said he personally knows Republicans and right-leaning independents who didn’t vote for candidates like Lake and Finchem as a result of their embrace of election conspiracies. “In fact I do know individuals who either split or simply withheld their vote,” Melton said.
— Associated Press author Josh Kelety in Phoenix contributed this report.
Posts misrepresent Arizona official’s ballot comments
CLAIM: Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates admitted that tens of hundreds of early ballots dropped off on Election Day were mishandled when he said during a CNN interview, “We have no idea where these are from.”
THE FACTS: The interview clip circulating on social media doesn’t show Gates admitting to misconduct. He was responding to a particular query from a CNN host concerning the geographic origin of absentee ballots in a batch that had just been tabulated. Social media users shared a clip of the Nov. 11 CNN interview with Gates, suggesting that it showed him admitting that tens of hundreds of ballots were mishandled. “We have no idea where these are from. These might be from anywhere within the county,” Gates said within the clip, referring to ballots tabulated that day. “This will not be picked out of a certain area, these are usually not pulled by precinct.” Archived video of the entire interview shows Gates was responding to an issue from CNN news anchor John King concerning the geographic origin of ballots in a batch of roughly 75,000 tabulated ballots released that day. King specifically asked about “late-earlies,” referring to absentee ballots that were mailed to voters ahead of the election and dropped off at voting sites on Election Day. King said, “Are we now, within the sense that you may have a large county, it’s 9,200 plus square miles, do , those that were released tonight, are they from the central Phoenix area, the more close-in suburbs that are likely to be more Democratic?” In his response, which is where the clip circulating on social media begins, Gates explains that nearly all of the 75,000 ballots were late-earlies, and he couldn’t comment on their origin due to the best way they’re forged and tabulated in Maricopa. Just about all of Arizona’s vote happens by mail, although some voters forged their ballots in-person at voting centers. Election officials then release their vote totals in batches. Maricopa County allows voters to forged absentee ballots at any one in all 223 vote centers across the county. Ballots dropped off on Election Day are driven to a central tabulation facility in downtown Phoenix. People who arrive at the power first get priority. Subsequently, any batch of Maricopa votes could contain ballots from everywhere in the county. The social media users sharing the clip of Gates are “misrepresenting what the chairman said,” Fields Moseley, a spokesperson for Maricopa County, wrote in an email to the AP. “While the chairman doesn’t know where every batch of ballots got here from, our elections employees can account for all of them through documentation and chain of custody,” he wrote.
States report election results at different speeds
CLAIM: Florida’s ability to report election results quickly in the course of the 2022 midterms means states which have taken longer, reminiscent of Arizona and Nevada, are engaged in fraud.
THE FACTS: Florida has measures in place to hurry up its count on Election Day. However the incontrovertible fact that Florida reports results faster than other states doesn’t mean that those states are committing fraud, elections experts told the AP. Election officials repeatedly warned prior to the 2022 midterm elections that leads to some states won’t be known for days. Despite this, many falsely suggested the length of time is correlated with election integrity. Some compared Florida — which had finished counting its ballots, except those from overseas, by Wednesday — to Arizona and Nevada. “That is absurd. Arizona and Nevada have loads fewer voters than Florida and yet they take days longer to tally the outcomes,” one tweet said. “Total fraud.” Arizona had nearly 14,000 ballots left to count on Thursday. Sophia Solis, a spokesperson for the Arizona secretary of state’s office, told the AP that no counties in Arizona had fully reported their unofficial results by midnight on Election Day. In Nevada, all 17 counties submitted initial tallies, including in-person vote reports, to election administrators by the early morning hours of Nov. 9, Jennifer Russell, an aide to Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, told the AP Wednesday. Nonetheless, the state accepted mail ballots postmarked by Election Day until Saturday, and had 22,000 left to process within the state’s largest county, Clark, the day of the deadline, Clark County Registrar of Voters Joe Gloria said at a press conference. But states’ reporting speeds largely reflect the various ways absentee and mail-in ballots are processed in each jurisdiction, election experts told the AP. “There are various reasons Florida counts quicker than other states, or other states haven’t accomplished their counts yet, and it has nothing to do with fraud in other states,” Michael Morley, an election law expert and professor at Florida State University, wrote in an email. Certainly one of the essential differences is how soon before Election Day officials are allowed to start pre-processing early ballots, which can involve confirming their validity or scanning them, Morley wrote. Under state law, Florida officials can start this process nearly a month before Election Day. In contrast, Arizona counties didn’t send mail ballots to voters until Oct. 12 and the earliest they went out in Nevada was Oct. 7. Florida was required to send mail ballots no later than Sept. 24. One other key difference is whether or not states accept mail ballots after Election Day. In Florida, most mail ballots should be received by 7 p.m. local time on Election Day. Most early and mail voting results should be reported to the Florida Department of State starting inside half-hour after the polls close and continuing every 45 minutes until all results are reported. Nevada, nonetheless, accepts mail ballots as much as 5 p.m. 4 days after the election so long as they were postmarked by Election Day. Arizona’s deadline is identical as Florida’s, local time. Still, there may be nothing unusual or improper about votes being counted after Election Day, said Michael McDonald, a professor of political science on the University of Florida. Morley explained that other differences which will speed up reporting include staffing levels, available equipment, the length of time needed to confirm each ballot and the way long after Election Day voters are capable of fix, or “cure,” their ballots if any problems are found.
— Associated Press author Melissa Goldin in Latest York contributed this report with additional reporting from Ken Ritter in Las Vegas.
Posts spin baseless theory about FTX, Ukraine and Democrats
CLAIM: U.S. aid to Ukraine was laundered back to the Democratic Party through the failed cryptocurrency exchange firm FTX.
THE FACTS: These claims misrepresent a short-term initiative in Ukraine that used FTX to convert cryptocurrency donations for the war effort into government-issued currency. The Ukrainian government has not invested nor stored money in FTX, based on the country’s Ministry of Digital Transformation. FTX, the third-largest cryptocurrency exchange on the planet, filed for bankruptcy protection on Nov. 11 amid news it was short billions of dollars and can have been hacked. Sam Bankman-Fried, the corporate’s CEO, resigned the identical day. The moves have fueled baseless conspiracy theories. “So Biden gave a great deal of money to Ukraine, who gave a great deal of money to FTX, who gave a great deal of money to Democrats,” reads one tweet with over 100,000 likes. No evidence has been presented to support the claims. Still, they’ve been shared by U.S. lawmakers, distinguished Republicans and Russian accounts. Ukraine’s government “never invested any funds into FTX,” Alex Bornyakov, the deputy minister of digital transformation in Ukraine said on Twitter on Monday. After Russia invaded Ukraine, a latest crypto fundraising foundation called Aid For Ukraine began taking donations to assist the Ukrainian war effort, the ministry said in an emailed statement to the AP on Wednesday. The ministry said it “provided informational support” to the inspiration, which was run by the cryptocurrency exchange Kuna and the blockchain company Everstake. In early March, Aid For Ukraine began working with FTX to convert cryptocurrency donations into Ukraine’s government-issued currency, a partnership that resulted in April 2022, based on the ministry. Sergey Vasylchuk, the CEO of Everstake, told the AP that cryptocurrencies were an efficient strategy to raise funds for Ukraine to defend itself amid Russia’s invasion. He said FTX was only used to start with of the war to convert cryptocurrency donations. The donations would then get sent to the National Bank of Ukraine and no crypto was stored on FTX. Michael Chobanian, the founding father of the Kuna exchange, said they’d converted cryptocurrencies to U.S. dollars through FTX and deposited them within the national bank of Ukraine initially of the war. “That’s it,” Chobanian said. The Ministry of Digital Transformation added that it “has never funded FTX” and “has never worked with any political party of america of America.” It’s true that Bankman-Fried has been a significant Democratic donor. FEC records show that he made significant donations to Democratic candidates and PACS this yr. Nonetheless, he has also made contributions to some Republican candidates and conservative-leaning PACS. FTX’s co-CEO Ryan Salame also donated to groups that supported Republican candidates in 2022. White House spokesperson Robyn Patterson said any claim that U.S. assistance to Ukraine has “been diverted to assist American political parties is unequivocally false and never grounded in point of fact.” Vedant Patel, principal deputy spokesperson on the State Department, said there’s “no reason to imagine that these reports are anything but pure falsehoods and misinformation.” A spokesperson for the U.S. Agency for International Development said safeguards put in place by the World Bank, coupled with expert third-party monitoring support throughout the Ukrainian government, ensure accountability around the usage of the funds. FTX and lawyers representing the corporate didn’t reply to requests for comment.
— Associated Press writers Ali Swenson in Latest York and Karena Phan in Los Angeles contributed this report with additional reporting from Thalia Beaty in Latest York.
Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck
Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material might not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.