Election claim checking: a practical guide

What to take away

An election claim can carry a genuine screenshot and a genuine number and still be wrong, because it names the wrong county, the wrong hour, or the wrong stage of the count. Verification starts by placing the claim inside the process that produced it.

Write a jurisdiction card first

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American elections are run by states and counties, not by one national office. A ballot deadline, an observer rule or a certification body in one state may not exist in the next. Inside a single state, a county contest and a statewide contest can follow different schedules.

For concrete state examples, Georgia's Secretary of State publishes statewide election results, while county election superintendents handle county-level administration and certification. Pennsylvania's Department of State publishes statewide results, while county boards of elections handle county-level administration and certification. Search the official Election Results pages for the relevant jurisdiction, and check whether results are unofficial or certified.

The Georgia Election Code and Pennsylvania Election Code are examples of state laws governing election procedures. Check the current law for the state, contest and process stage in your jurisdiction card; there is no single state election code that applies nationwide.

Turn a speech into separate testable claims

One sentence usually holds several claims.

Put each piece in a ledger:

Refuse to let evidence for one row carry another.

The statistics and charts verification guide covers the arithmetic side of that ledger once you have the source files in hand.

Know which stage of the count you are looking at

Election-night numbers are fast, partial and unofficial. They can leave out mail ballots, provisional ballots, military and overseas ballots, and whole jurisdictions that have not reported. A newsroom can project a winner hours before any official certifies a result.

The Election Assistance Commission's guidance on provisional voting describes one category that keeps a count open. It asks jurisdictions to publish how many provisional ballots were issued and counted, and why some were rejected. The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) requires a system for voters to learn whether their own provisional ballot counted and, if not, why.

Label every number with source, scope, status and retrieval time. "100 percent of precincts reporting" describes precincts. It says nothing about ballot categories still being processed.

Treat a changing total as a question

Totals move when a county uploads another batch, fixes a transposition, processes eligible ballots, reconciles records or refreshes a display. Each of those has a paper trail.

Save successive official result files. Compare contest, jurisdiction, timestamp, reporting units, ballot categories and footnotes. Then ask the election office which batch or correction explains the difference. Movement alone proves neither fraud nor error.

Separate canvass, audit, certification, recount and contest

The order varies by state, and the steps overlap. A recount request is not evidence that the first count was wrong. When an audit turns up a discrepancy, report its scope, its cause, how it was resolved, and whether it could change the outcome. For state-specific procedures, consult the Pennsylvania Election Code or Georgia Election Code and the applicable state audit rules; triggers and authorities differ by state.

Read a ballot video in process context

A clip of ballots being moved, duplicated, adjudicated or scanned cannot be read from appearance alone. You need the location, the date, the process step, and the authorized personnel. You also need the normal procedure. You also need to know what material is on screen: voted ballots, blank stock, test decks or envelopes.

Preserve the original post and media file. Find the earliest upload, identify the election office, request the procedure and any incident record, and compare against official observation footage where it exists.

Check turnout and vote arithmetic

Never divide votes by a denominator from another date or another population. Registration totals change, some states allow same-day registration, and a district contest does not use a statewide denominator.

Reproduce the arithmetic in named variables you fill with the jurisdiction's own figures:

Keep provisional figures and the time each was revised. Rounding alone can push displayed percentages a fraction above or below 100.

For a national denominator, the Election Assistance Commission's studies and reports carry the biennial Election Administration and Voting Survey, a state-by-state collection covering registration, list maintenance, and military and overseas voting. It runs on its own publication schedule, which is one more reason to date any figure you take from it.

For a claim about voter-list maintenance, identify the state's election agency and official voter-registration system. The Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) is a multistate program used by participating states to compare registration and related records; it is not a nationwide voter-registration database, and not every state participates.

Read campaign finance as filing data

Track stable candidate and committee identifiers, reporting periods, amendments, transaction types and memo entries. A single contribution can appear in more than one table for accounting reasons. A filing is a committee's own disclosure, not a finding by a regulator.

For a "largest donor" claim, define the candidate committee and outside spending. Define individual contributions and how you aggregate them. Define the date range. Define whether refunds are netted out. Different definitions produce different winners.

For federal elections, use the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and its campaign finance data portal on FEC.gov to search committee filings and transactions. The Federal Election Campaign Act governs federal campaign finance disclosures. For state and local races, check the applicable state campaign finance agency and its filing system; FEC records do not cover every state or local filing.

Read a lawsuit by its posture

A complaint contains one party's claims. A declaration contains one person's statements. An order or judgment contains what the court actually did. Check the entry number, the filing party, the date, and which claims were addressed. Also check the disposition, any appeal, and the current status.

For federal cases, search PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records), the federal courts' docket system. For state cases, use the relevant state judiciary's official docket portal. CourtListener can help locate court opinions and filings, but check the official docket for the case's current record and status.

"A court case says" is not a finding. Attribute the allegation to the party that made it, and report separately what the court decided, if it has decided anything.

Narrow an official security statement

An official may be describing voter registration systems, voting equipment, election-night reporting sites, physical access, or certified results. Do not widen a statement about one system into a claim about all of them. A public website going down does not by itself show that any vote record changed.

Where a claim turns on a health or research finding, the evidence types comparison sets out how a preprint, a complaint and a peer-reviewed trial differ in weight.

Publish a status box

For any claim still moving, run this box beside the story.

Common questions

Is a media race call an official result?

No. A race call is an editorial projection based on partial returns. Official results come from the jurisdiction's certification process, and the two can differ while the count continues.

Does a late-counted ballot mean a late vote?

No. Eligibility depends on when and how the ballot was cast, postmarked, received or cured under that state's law. Check the rule in the jurisdiction where the ballot was cast.

Does an audit count every ballot?

Not usually. Many audits examine a defined sample of ballots or equipment. An audit and a recount have different purposes, different methods and different legal triggers.

Can a candidate's own account be used as a source?

Yes, for what the candidate said. For administrative facts and official results, use the election office, the filed record and the governing law.