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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Elections & voting fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about elections & voting. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

5,415 published reviews in this topic

PolitiFactElections & voting

“In Wisconsin, there are approximately 70,000 absentee ballots that do not have matching ballot applications as required by law.”

Publisher’s rating: Pants on Fire

Related research includes a transcript of Donald Trump’s January 6 speech. In the excerpt, Trump says Wisconsin had votes “without a valid absentee ballot application” and adds, “So they had a vote, but they had no application.” This directly matches the claim’s central allegation about Wisconsin absentee ballots lacking applications. The excerpt does not give the approximately 70,000 figure or provide records, a counting method, or other evidence establishing how many ballots lacked applications. It therefore identifies the allegation in the speech but does not substantiate the claimed number or determine whether the ballots described were unlawful.

PolitiFactElections & voting

Says Dominion Voting System flipped votes to Joe Biden in states where Trump is bringing legal challenges.

Publisher’s rating: Pants on Fire

Related reporting from Maricopa County’s elected recorder addresses the Arizona version of the allegation: that Dominion tabulators changed votes from Trump to Biden. It says that after the original count of 2.1 million ballots in November 2020, bipartisan Republican and Democratic volunteers hand-counted approximately 47,000 ballot ovals, and that their count matched the machine count exactly. It also reports that Maricopa County conducted another test of the tabulation equipment on November 18, 2020, following continued allegations. The account describes this as part of a sequence of checks, not as proof that every claim about every state was examined. It says the Arizona challenge did not establish that Biden’s electors failed to receive the highest number of votes or show fraud or an error rate sufficient to undermine confidence in the results. The excerpt also says that prior probes had not uncovered material fraud or error. These findings address the Arizona allegation; the supplied evidence does not document checks in all states where Trump pursued legal challenges.

PolitiFactElections & voting

The number of followers John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz have on Instagram proves the Pennsylvania Senate race was illegitimate.

Publisher’s rating: Pants on Fire

Related reporting on social media and elections identifies the relevant comparison: in Pennsylvania’s 2022 Senate race, Republican Mehmet Oz had more than 1 million social-media followers, while John Fetterman had fewer than 200,000. The excerpt says Oz’s audience reflected his prior career as a nationally known television personality and cautions that such an audience need not represent voters in Pennsylvania. That distinction weakens the inference that a difference in follower counts, by itself, establishes anything about the legitimacy of the result. The research describes follower totals as measures of online reach, not as evidence that votes were improperly counted or that the election was invalid. It does not examine the race’s administration or directly investigate the allegation of illegitimacy, so it cannot independently resolve that allegation.