PolitiFact – Dean Phillips didn’t win the NH primary. He said so himself.

Mickey Mouse, Santa Claus and Joe Biden — they’re now all common write-in candidates after this year’s New Hampshire Democratic primary, which President Biden won with more than 79,000 write-in votes.

But it didn’t take long for social media accounts to allege that his win was a result of election fraud.

“SOURCE: Rep. Dean Phillips received almost twice as many votes as Biden did in the New Hampshire primary,” read a Jan. 24 post on X. “The Democrat Party, in an effort not to embarrass the president, ‘found’ 50,000+ write in votes for Biden to give him the ‘win’.” 

A day later, the post had been reshared by X users 7,100 times and viewed more than 4 million times.

The unsubstantiated claim was first shared by the popular X account @amuse. With its stormtrooper profile pic and almost 300,000 followers, the account claims to support “independent journalists” and deliver “conservative takes on liberal talking points.” 

The account owner also writes “Politique Republic,” a Substack blog; the author description reads “a political dissident, pundit, author, and artist.” 

(Screenshot of X post)

Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., who announced his candidacy in October 2023, did not get more votes than Joe Biden nor win the primary election. Results posted on the New Hampshire secretary of state’s website as of Jan. 26 show that Phillips received about 24,000 votes while President Biden got over 79,000. 

A few hours after the account shared its unsourced claim, Phillips himself debunked it. “This is shameful and absolutely untrue,” wrote Phillips on X. “The State of New Hampshire manages its elections with great integrity and efficiency, and Joe Biden won the NH Democratic primary election last evening fair and square.”

(Screenshot of X post)

New Hampshire’s secretary of state, Republican David Scanlan, administers Granite State elections. Political parties are allowed observers in polling places, but those observers do not count ballots, said Bradford E. Cook, attorney and chairman of the state’s Ballot Law Commission, a bipartisan body established by the Legislature. Election officials and volunteers count votes and relay results to the secretary of state.

Separately, New Hampshire’s attorney general sends observers to polling places “to observe and assure the vote is being done according to law.” Cook said.

Anna Sventek, Scanlan’s communications director, confirmed that the results reported on the website were “the accurate results of the election.” 

Amuse’s claim mimics other false claims that large numbers of votes were “found” in the 2020 election.

Why Biden wasn’t on the ballot

The New Hampshire Democratic primary was unique this year because the presumptive nominee, Biden, did not appear on the ballot. This was because of a disagreement between the state and national party after the Democratic National Committee reordered the primary schedule to make South Carolina the first primary state instead of New Hampshire.

New Hampshire state law dictates that its primary must be first in the nation, so the state went ahead with its Jan. 23 primary, despite the DNC’s change. As a result, no Democratic delegates from the state will be awarded at the convention later this year.

Because of the change, Biden did not campaign in New Hampshire, leading his supporters to organize a write-in campaign on his behalf. 

Write-in votes can take longer to be reported because they must be hand-counted. Many precincts prepared for the large number of write-in ballots from Biden supporters.

Because of this, the secretary of state and attorney general said in January that “to the extent that counting the write-in votes takes longer than expected, the moderator may release the Republican results earlier than the Democratic results provided the results are complete.”

Votes were not found, said Cook, “but added to the total as they were reported to the secretary of state.”

Our ruling

An X post claimed Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., received twice as many votes as Joe Biden in the New Hampshire Democratic primary. But official results from the secretary of state show President Joe Biden won the election with a large number of write-in votes.

We rate this claim Pants on Fire!