As misinformation spread like wildfire in the days after Election Day — from rumors about artificially inflated vote totals to claims of ballots being mysteriously found in the early hours of the morning — Wisconsin reporters took to Twitter and other platforms to debunk false claims being spread on social media. We’ve compiled a roundup of some of their efforts.
On Wednesday, as election officials continued to tally the state’s vote count, totals began to sway in favor of former Vice President Joe Biden. As the nation watched, many took to social media with claims alleging that Wisconsin saw more votes cast than the state’s total number of registered voters.
Several Wisconsin reporters responded to the assertions, pointing to an important fact that had been overlooked: the state allows for same-day voter registration. Others making false claims about registrant numbers had miscalculated voter turnout as a percentage of registered voters, rather than a percentage of eligible voters.
The voter registration fallacies were included in The Associated Press’ “Not real news roundup,” which highlighted attempts across the country to spread misinformation, including claims of ballot stuffing and the purported #sharpiegate scandal.
The AP also provided a fact-check of Trump’s speech claiming the election was “stolen.” Many television networks cut away as the president repeated dozens of unsubstantiated claims.
The Wisconsin State Journal encouraged readers to check the facts as they considered Trump’s statements.
Claims of voter fraud were rampant all week, especially in those states where the margin was razor-thin, like Wisconsin. Two charts posted on the news website FiveThirtyEight showed an uptick in Democratic votes for Joe Biden in Wisconsin and Michigan on the morning of Nov. 4. Supporters of President Donald Trump used the graphics in an effort to cast further doubt on the integrity of the election results.
But the spike occurred because counties in those states released a large batch of results all at once, FiveThirtyEight told Politifact. A red line represented Trump’s votes, but it was hidden behind the blue line representing votes for Biden.
Eric Litke and Madeline Heim, reporters for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin and PolitFact Wisconsin, shed light on this untruth, as well as several others.
Another viral claim that attempted to cast doubt on election tallies was one asserting that election officials took a break, and when they returned, Biden coincidentally came back ahead by 100,000 votes.
Like the other allegations, this wasn’t true.
In reality, the jump came after the city of Milwaukee’s central count finished processing mail-in votes around 3:30 a.m., explained Green Bay Press-Gazette‘s Haley BeMiller.
“The late boost for Biden from Milwaukee was expected, especially because mail-in ballots tend to skew toward Democrats and Milwaukee is a Democratic stronghold,” BeMiller reported. “After Milwaukee reported those returns, Biden jumped ahead of Trump by about 8,000 votes. His lead widened to around 20,000 after Green Bay reported in-person and absentee results and Kenosha finished its tally.”
According to ProPublica and First Draft, nearly half of recent top-performing posts on Facebook related to mail voting “contained false or substantially misleading claims.” As the spread of false information continues to threaten our democracy, the efforts of Wisconsin reporters serve as a good example of how journalists play a critical role in combatting misinformation.
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