Debunked: Trump's Claim of "1,126,940 votes created out of thin air" in PA

[Mick West]

This false claim was Tweeted by Trump yesterday:

Source: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1332552283553476608


In one of the most factually inaccurate Presidential tweets of all time, Trump retweeted an image posted by PA State Senator Doug Mastriano, and claimed it shows that 1,126,940 votes were created out of thin air. Or course if this were true then something would be terribly wrong with the election, but of course it's not.

Here's the image in questions:

The numbers in the table are mostly correct (for the time, they are all slightly higher now, on 11/28), but for some reason report Trump's election-day votes are listed as higher than they were. Here's the official figures:

Or in a similar format to Trump/Mastriano's image:

So total mail-in votes are 2,616,012. They claim that (false) Pennsylvania reports having mailed out 1,823,148 ballots, or which 1,462,302 were returned. We can find the actual numbers here:
https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/PA.html

Well, that's totally different, the reality, (true) is that Pennsylvania reports having mailed out 3,087,524 ballots, of which 2,629,672 were returned. This is perfectly in keeping with the official results.

So where did Mastriano get the false numbers 1,823,148 ballots & 1,462,302 returned?

Snopes suggests the 1,823,148 was just the Democrat ballot requests, which is fairly close at 1,941,131. But that's not it. It's actually the numbers from the June primary election!


Source: https://twitter.com/Elaijuh/status/1332470519409635328


You can see the 1,823,148 number here (on a page that comes up if you just google for 1,823,148)
https://data.pa.gov/Government-Effi...ection-Mail-Ballot-Requests-Departm/853w-ecfz

This entirely false claim was also repeated by Giuliani in the "hearing" in Gettysburg:

Article:

"You sent out in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 1,823,148 absentee or mail-in ballots. You received back 1.4 million approximately. However, in the count for president, you counted 2.5 million. I don't know what accounts for the 700,000 difference between the ballots you sent out and the number of ballots that ended up in the count," said Giuliani.

Source: https://wjactv.com/news/local/rudy-giuliani-addresses-voter-fraud-this-election-with-pa-senate-republicans

Errors of this magnitude being repeated at the highest levels can only indicate colossal ineptitude, or a deliberate attempt to create uncertainty.

 

[Mendel]

Errors of this magnitude being repeated at the highest levels can only indicate colossal ineptitude, or a deliberate attempt to create uncertainty.

A failure to check autoritative data sources.
Which, in a legal proceeding, may amount to ineptitude, but they're fairly pressed for time for this one.

 

[scombrid]

It has to be deliberate.

 

[Agent K]

National Review editors ripped Trump for this.

Article:

Almost nothing that the Trump team has alleged has withstood the slightest scrutiny. In particular, it's hard to find much that is remotely true in the president's Twitter feed these days. It is full of already-debunked claims and crackpot conspiracy theories about Dominion voting systems. Over the weekend, he repeated the charge that 1.8 million mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania were mailed out, yet 2.6 million were ultimately tallied. In a rather elementary error, this compares the number of mail-ballots requested in the primary to the number of ballots counted in the general. A straight apples-to-apples comparison finds that 1.8 million mail-in ballots were requested in the primary and 1.5 million returned, while 3.1 million ballots were requested in the general and 2.6 million returned.

Source: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/11/trump-election-fraud-disgraceful-endgame/

 

[Jeff Semenak]

This false claim was Tweeted by Trump yesterday:

Source: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1332552283553476608


In one of the most factually inaccurate Presidential tweets of all time, Trump retweeted an image posted by PA State Senator Doug Mastriano, and claimed it shows that 1,126,940 votes were created out of thin air. Or course if this were true then something would be terribly wrong with the election, but of course it's not.

Here's the image in questions:

View attachment 42221

The numbers in the table are mostly correct (for the time, they are all slightly higher now, on 11/28), but for some reason report Trump's election-day votes are listed as higher than they were. Here's the official figures:

View attachment 42222

Or in a similar format to Trump/Mastriano's image:


View attachment 42223

So total mail-in votes are 2,616,012. They claim that (false) Pennsylvania reports having mailed out 1,823,148 ballots, or which 1,462,302 were returned. We can find the actual numbers here:
https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/PA.html

View attachment 42224
Well, that's totally different, the reality, (true) is that Pennsylvania reports having mailed out 3,087,524 ballots, of which 2,629,672 were returned. This is perfectly in keeping with the official results.

So where did Mastriano get the false numbers 1,823,148 ballots & 1,462,302 returned?

Snopes suggests the 1,823,148 was just the Democrat ballot requests, which is fairly close at 1,941,131. But that's not it. It's actually the numbers from the June primary election!


Source: https://twitter.com/Elaijuh/status/1332470519409635328


You can see the 1,823,148 number here (on a page that comes up if you just google for 1,823,148)
https://data.pa.gov/Government-Effi...ection-Mail-Ballot-Requests-Departm/853w-ecfz

View attachment 42225

This entirely false claim was also repeated by Giuliani in the "hearing" in Gettysburg:

Article:

"You sent out in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 1,823,148 absentee or mail-in ballots. You received back 1.4 million approximately. However, in the count for president, you counted 2.5 million. I don't know what accounts for the 700,000 difference between the ballots you sent out and the number of ballots that ended up in the count," said Giuliani.

Source: https://wjactv.com/news/local/rudy-giuliani-addresses-voter-fraud-this-election-with-pa-senate-republicans

Errors of this magnitude being repeated at the highest levels can only indicate colossal ineptitude, or a deliberate attempt to create uncertainty.

The Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .io is assigned to the British Indian Ocean Territory.[1]
Amazing, that this, is your source.

 

[Mendel]

The Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .io is assigned to the British Indian Ocean Territory.[1]
Amazing, that this, is your source.

I notice you don't actually challenge the number. I'm reminded of Giuliani's legal strategy, which brought up questions of process without actually alleging any fraud.

Article:

New GitHub Pages domain: github.io

Beginning today, all GitHub Pages sites are moving to a new, dedicated
domain: github.io. This is a security measure aimed at removing potential
vectors for cross domain attacks targeting the main github.com session as well
as vectors for phishing attacks relying on the presence of the "github.com"
domain to build a false sense of trust in malicious websites.

Source: https://github.blog/2013-04-05-new-github-pages-domain-github-io/

Github is a hosting site, so the actual source are the people who created this github repository, not Github itself.

Article:

The United States Elections Project disseminates research and projects led by Michael McDonald, a Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida. You can follow him on Twitter at @ElectProject.

Source: https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/FAQ.html

The cited data that Mick used has its own source listed:

Article:

Last Report: 11/20/2020
Source: Data provided by Pennsylvania Secretary of State's office

Source: https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/PA.html

They had a dashboard on their website.

This is not hard to find out, you know.

 

[ump]

The Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .io is assigned to the British Indian Ocean Territory.[1]
Amazing, that this, is your source.

Why is that "amazing"? Do you believe that only only people in the BIOT rent webspace there...? Lots of books you'll find in your local bookstore - or receive from Amazon - are printed in China. That doesn't mean the authors are Chinese. Often with webspace you'll do a deal with a company and where they put the site is up to them.

Perhaps you should investigate facts before jumping to conclusions? And if you don't know anything about how Internet hosting works and can't be bothered to find out, that you shouldn't make arguments based on it?

 

[ump]

A failure to check autoritative data sources.
Which, in a legal proceeding, may amount to ineptitude, but they're fairly pressed for time for this one.

How long does it take to phone or email the relevant official in Pennsylvania? My bet is that a reply to an email would come in an hour on something like this, and that a phone call would go straight through.

 

[Mendel]

How long does it take to phone or email the relevant official in Pennsylvania? My bet is that a reply to an email would come in an hour on something like this, and that a phone call would go straight through.

It's not about the time it takes to get a response, it's about using the limited time you have to get the complaint files most productively. In a normal proceeding, with no time pressure, they'd have had time to get a helper to check on this; but being pressed for time, everyone in their office might have been busy doing more important stuff. In this way, time pressure may excuse something that is less excusable under normal circumstances. They had a number from somewhere, and did not doublecheck their source; I can empathize with them giving that low priority.

Mind you, I don't have evidence that it happened that way; it could've been a deliberate deception for all I know. I simply don't think we can decide that from the evidence at hand.

 

[Alexandria Nick]

The Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .io is assigned to the British Indian Ocean Territory.[1]
Amazing, that this, is your source.

I know this is from months ago but:

The io top level domain is very popular among tech companies because io is, well, I/O to them. Good old Input/Output. Heck, Marco Rubio's campaign used "rub.io" as one of their URLs. A lot of io addresses are domain hacks like that, especially the parts of the world where words ending in -io are more common.