In a clip from Fox News’ coverage of the Georgia Senate runoff, the vote tallies for both candidates briefly drop by thousands of votes. Social media posts use the clip to falsely claim election fraud. The Associated Press, which provided the data to Fox, said the clip shows a brief overestimate of votes caused by human error.
The tight political races in the 2022 midterm election fueled a wide range of false and misleading claims of election fraud, as we’ve previously written.
In the closely watched Georgia Senate runoff held on Dec. 6, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock faced Republican candidate Herschel Walker. Warnock’s win bolstered the Democrats’ control of the Senate for the next two years.
More than 1.8 million people voted during the runoff’s early voting period held between Nov. 28 and Dec. 2 — a record number of votes. There were 1,630,860 voters who cast a ballot on Dec. 6, according to the unofficial election results from the Georgia secretary of state.
But as the votes were tallied that night, a live broadcast on Fox News sparked claims of election fraud on social media, as the number and percentage of votes for each candidate decreased for a short period.
An Instagram post shared on Dec. 7 shows the clip with the caption, “They did it again. Does anyone really believe we have election integrity?”
“More disappearing votes on live on TV,” the caption on a Dec. 7 Instagram post says. “Cheaters, lyres and a bunch of thieves,” reads a...
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