Officials in Maricopa County, Arizona, announced on Nov. 28 that they certified the county's 2022 midterm election results. But some social media users claim there are missing votes in the county.
"IMPOSSIBLE: Maricopa County Lost 291,930 Election Day Votes?" reads a Nov. 28 Facebook post (direct link, archived link).
The claim stems from a Nov. 28 Gateway Pundit article, which misreported voting information provided by Maricopa County.
The article mistakenly compared Election Day in-person votes with total Election Day votes, and it claimed that the difference in the numbers indicated votes were somehow lost.
"Somewhere along the way Maricopa County lost 291,930 votes based on their own reporting," reads the article.
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The Gateway Pundit article was shared more than 1,000 times on Facebook, according to social media insights tool CrowdTangle.
But the claim that there are missing votes is baseless.
Maricopa County officials told USA TODAY the post conflates the in-person voting number on Election Day with the total Election Day vote number – more than 540,000 – that the county reported.
In addition to the nearly 250,000 in-person Election Day votes, total Election Day votes also included more than 290,000 ballots dropped off at voting sites on Nov. 8. There were also a small number of provisional ballots cast on Election Day...
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