From Reality Check Team
BBC News
Media signatureDonald Trump: “I only want to find 11,780 votes”
U.S. President Donald Trump phoned electoral officials in Georgia for more than an hour while he continues to try to reverse the outcome in the state.
He made a number of fraud allegations for which he did not provide evidence.
We checked some of his claims.
Claim 1: “So the dead voted. And I think the number is close to 5,000 people [in Georgia]. ‘
President Trump and his supporters have repeatedly claimed that thousands of votes were cast in states across the country using the identity of the deceased.
Georgia’s top electoral officer, Republican Foreign Secretary Brad Raffensperger, denied the president’s claim, saying there were only two confirmed cases of votes attributed to the dead.
The President’s attorney, Cleta Mitchell, also answered the call, suggesting that they have details about the voting of the dead.
“There is a universe of people who have the same name and year of birth and have died,” she said to Mr. Raffensperger.
However, our previous examination of a list of “10,000 dead voters” in Michigan found that approach was seriously flawed.
Cross-referencing death lists in the US and voters in a particular state creates thousands of matches – with the same name and year of birth – both dead and alive.
Our Michigan study found a large number of matches even when the month of birth was included.
We also contacted a sample of these “dead voters” and found that they are very much alive.
Image rightsEPAImage descriptionMr Trump told Georgian Foreign Secretary Brad Raffensperger, “I only want to get 11,780 votes.”
Claim 2: ‘[There] There were thousands upon thousands of ballot papers in a box that was not an official or sealed box. ‘
The President refers to a video recorded on a counting system at the State Farm Arena in Fulton County, Georgia, indicating that it exposes fraudulent activity by election officials.
The footage shows officers returning to their counting areas and a container of ballot papers being pulled out from under a table
“When they got back,” said Mr. Trump on his phone call, “they didn’t go to their ward.
“They went to the apron that was wrapped around the table, beneath which were thousands and thousands of ballot papers in a box that was not an official or sealed box.”
Election officials have previously responded to the allegation, saying the footage shows normal practice.
Gabriel Sterling, the manager for implementing the voting system in Georgia, tweeted state investigators who had seen the entire video and found nothing out of the ordinary.
Image rightsGetty ImagesImage descriptionGeorgia’s electoral systems manager Gabriel Sterling has struggled against the president’s claims
An official investigation found that “all security footage revealed that no mysterious ballot papers were tabled from an unknown location and hidden under tables, as some have reported”.
Fulton County’s polling officer Richard Barron said workers “put these ballot boxes under their workplaces because it is the most convenient place to put these things.”
And state authorities said the boxes with the ballot papers were not unofficial.
Claim 3: “You went out because of a main water break. And there was no water pipe, there was nothing. There was no break. ‘
Mr Trump is referring to a census break at the same location in Fulton County.
At the time, election officials issued a press release saying a water leak had struck a room where postal ballot papers were tabulated.
An official investigation later clarified “what was originally reported as a water leak … was in fact a urinal that had overflowed”.
According to the report, this did not affect Fulton County’s vote count, which resumed later that evening.
President Trump also said when election officials returned, “there were no Republican election observers – in fact there were no Democratic election observers”.
This is true – but the official investigation found that they had not been asked to leave, nor were they prevented from returning.
Frances Watson, chief investigator for the Georgian Foreign Minister, said: “Nobody gave them advice on what to do.
“And it was still open to her or the public to come back to see whenever they wanted.”
Claim 4: “They had out-of-state voters – they voted in Georgia, but they were from abroad – out of 4,925.”
Ryan Germany, an attorney representing Georgia’s Secretary of State on the call, has denied this claim.
Image rightsGetty Images
“Everyone we’ve been through are people who lived in Georgia, moved to another state, but then rightfully returned to Georgia,” he said.
The numbers given by Mr. Trump’s team in relation to these alleged non-state voters are “incorrect,” added Mr. Germany.
Ahead of Tuesday’s Senate runoff elections in Georgia, Raffensperger said “qualified Georgians and only Georgians are allowed to vote” and non-state voters will not be tolerated.
And he warned anyone trying to play the system, “We will find you and prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law.”
Claim 5: “You’re tearing up ballot papers. And you should look at this very carefully. Because it’s so illegal.”
The President mentioned what he said was the alleged crushing of “thousands” of “corrupt” ballot papers, implying that evidence of what he believes to be electoral errors has been deliberately destroyed.
In November, some social media posts stated that shredder companies had allegedly destroyed ballot papers.
An investigation into the destruction of papers in Cobb County, Georgia, found that it was a “routine cleanup” and that the documents discarded were not actual votes “relevant to election or rerun”.
These were old shipping labels and other papers with voter information, old emails, and duplicate postal voting forms.
Claim 6: “We did not go through your Dominion [voting machines]So we cannot give them a blessing. I mean, in other states we think we’ve found tremendous corruption with Dominion machines … “
The president has made various allegations of widespread electronic electoral fraud in several swing states.
He claims that the Dominion voting systems, which are widespread in the United States, including Georgia, have resulted in millions of Trump votes being cast on his rival Joe Biden.
However, there is no evidence of this in Georgia or elsewhere, and several lawsuits related to the claims have been dismissed by the courts.
Dominion Voting Systems has denied that their machines have been compromised in any way.
The allegations have been largely covered by some right-wing US news channels, but Fox News and Newsmax have since had to make corrections that show there is no evidence that the machines manipulated the votes in the election.
