CLAIM: Arizona’s Maricopa County announced that more than 540,000 voters visited voting centers on Election Day. It also announced that only 248,000 Election Day ballots were counted. Therefore, the county “lost” some 292,000 votes.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. This distorts county data. The county reported that more than 540,000 voters visited county voting centers on Election Day, but that figure includes about 290,000 people who dropped off mail-in ballots in person that day, the county said. The figure also included about 3,000 people who cast provisional ballots. The county does not list these as “Election Day” votes in its final results, but instead puts them in “early vote” and “provisional” categories.
THE FACTS: As officials in Arizona’s largest county met to certify the canvass of the 2022 election on Monday, social media users shared false claims about the county’s published Election Day turnout numbers.
“IMPOSSIBLE: Maricopa County Lost 291,930 Election Day Votes?” read a headline on a popular conservative website.
“BOMBSHELL REPORT: Maricopa County announced that on Election Day over 540,000 VOTERS visited one of the 223 vote anywhere centers in the county DESPITE releasing FINAL OFFICIAL RESULTS DATA claiming only 248,070 people voted…” read a tweet shared more than 8,000 times.
The posts referenced a document in which the county announced that, “On Election Day, over 540,000 voters visited a site, which is more Election Day voters than all prior General...
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