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Tag: AP Fact Check

  • NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

    NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

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    A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

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    Trump did not sign an order to deploy 20,000 troops on Jan. 6

    CLAIM: Former President Donald Trump signed an order to deploy 20,000 National Guard troops before his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but was stopped by the House sergeant at arms, at the behest of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

    THE FACTS: While Trump was involved in discussions in the days prior to Jan. 6 about the National Guard response, he issued no such order before or during the rioting. New footage released last week of House lawmakers on Jan. 6 has sparked a resurgence of false claims and conspiracy theories about the insurrection. The videos, recorded by Pelosi’s daughter, showed the congresswoman negotiating with governors and defense officials in an effort to get Guard troops to the Capitol. Some on social media used the occasion to revive baseless claims that Pelosi had stopped a Trump order for tens of thousands of National Guard troops before the event. “Trump signed an order to deploy 20,000 Guardsmen on J6. It was refused by the House sergeant at arms, who reports to Nancy Pelosi,” said one post that spread on Gettr, Instagram and Twitter. As the AP has previously reported, Trump was not involved in decision-making related to the National Guard on Jan. 6, and Pelosi did not stand in their way. Trump did say during a 30-second call on Jan. 5 with then Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller that “they” were going to need 10,000 troops on Jan. 6, according to a statement Miller provided to a House committee in May 2021. But Miller added that there was “no elaboration,” and he took the comment to mean “a large force would be required to maintain order the following day.” There is no evidence that Trump actually signed any order requesting 10,000 Guard troops, let alone 20,000, for Jan. 6. Reached for comment, a spokesperson for the Department of Defense provided a timeline of the agency’s involvement in preparing for and responding to the attack on the Capitol. The timeline shows no such order, and notes only that on Jan. 3, the president concurred with activating the D.C. National Guard to support law enforcement at the behest of Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser. When the rioting started, Bowser requested more Guard help, on behalf of the Capitol Police. That request was made to Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, who then went to Miller, who approved it. Neither Pelosi nor the House sergeant at arms could have stopped an ordered deployment of National Guard troops because Congress doesn’t control the National Guard, legal experts say. Guard troops are generally controlled by governors, though they can be federalized, said William C. Banks, a law professor at Syracuse University. The online claims “make no sense at all,” Banks said, adding, “The House sergeant at arms, he or she is not in the chain of command. Nor is Nancy Pelosi.” As the newly released footage showed, she and Mitch McConnell, then Senate majority leader, called for military assistance, including the National Guard. The House sergeant at arms does sit on the Capitol Police Board, which also includes the Senate sergeant at arms and the architect of the Capitol. That board opted not to request the Guard ahead of the insurrection, but did eventually request assistance after the rioting had already begun. There is no evidence that either Pelosi or McConnell directed the security officials not to call the guard beforehand, and Drew Hammill, Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff, said after the insurrection that Pelosi was never informed of such a request.

    — Associated Press writer Josh Kelety in Phoenix contributed this report.

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    Immigrants not auto enrolled to vote under new driver’s license law

    CLAIM: A new Massachusetts law providing driver’s licenses for immigrants in the country illegally will also automatically register them to vote in elections.

    THE FACTS: The law passed by Massachusetts state lawmakers this summer prohibits immigrants without legal permission to reside in the U.S. from being automatically registered to vote. Social media users have been reviving fears that the new Massachusetts law would give those living in the country illegally the right to vote since the state has automatic voter registration. The concerns come as residents weigh a ballot referendum on the law in next month’s election. The law, which takes effect July 1, 2023, would allow Massachusetts residents who cannot provide proof of lawful presence in the U.S. to obtain a driver’s license or permit if they meet all other requirements, such as passing a road test and providing proof of identity. “Giving Driver’s licenses to illegals gives them the right to vote,” the Massachusetts Republican Party said in a Facebook post. Republican gubernatorial candidate Geoff Diehl repeated the claim during a televised debate against Democratic rival Maura Healey. He noted that Republican Governor Charlie Baker vetoed the legislation in part over election concerns. Massachusetts’ Democratic-led legislature ultimately overrode the veto. But state Sen. Brendan Crighton, a Democrat who was a lead sponsor of the bill, told the AP that the voting concerns have “long been debunked.” He argued that green card holders, student visa holders and other types of noncitizens can already seek Massachusetts driver’s licenses, and there’s a system in place to ensure they’re not automatically registered to vote. The state in 2020 enacted an automatic voter registration law in which every eligible citizen who interacts with state agencies like the RMV is automatically registered to vote, unless they specifically opt out. The state’s current driver’s license form asks if the applicant is a U.S. citizen and a Massachusetts resident under a section for voter registration. If the applicant can’t answer “yes” to all the questions, they are then instructed to check a box that says, “Do not use my information for voter registration.” “The term ‘automatic voter registration’ is a misnomer in the sense that the individual is not registered to vote unless they are a citizen and over 18 years old,” Crighton said. “It is not actually automatic.” Amanda Orlando, Diehl’s campaign manager, didn’t dispute that Massachusetts’ new law specifically prohibits automatic voter registration for those seeking driver’s licenses. But she maintained the law, as constructed, “places the burden” of reviewing voting eligibility on the already overburdened and understaffed RMV. “What is written in the law, and what will happen in reality are different,” Orlando wrote in an email. “As noted by Governor Baker, they are not able to handle the volume they currently have, let alone increase it substantially with giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.” The RMV declined to comment, but Secretary of State William Galvin’s office, which oversees Massachusetts elections, said the two agencies have been in communication ahead of the law taking effect next year. Under the current process, the RMV provides the secretary of state’s office with all the relevant information for voter registration — such as an applicant’s name, date of birth and address — and can provide additional information to further verify voting eligibility, said Debra O’Malley, Galvin’s spokesperson. “The RMV has a record of what evidence of lawful presence has been provided and removes from those batches anyone who hasn’t provided them with a U.S. birth certificate, U.S. passport, or U.S. naturalization papers,” she said by email.

    — Associated Press writer Phillip Marcelo in New York contributed this report.

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    CNBC report on climate research didn’t confirm ‘chemtrails’ theory

    CLAIM: A CNBC story on research into technology to combat climate change admitted that “chemtrails” are real.

    THE FACTS: The story reported on a federal plan to research technology that could place materials in the atmosphere to reflect sunlight away from Earth, but experts say the idea is being investigated and is not currently in use. A TikTok video also shared on Instagram is distorting the facts around a recent CNBC story to advance a long-running conspiracy theory that the condensation trails, or contrails, left in the air by planes are actually dangerous “chemtrails.” “Chemtrails are real,” text shown in the video reads. The theory posits that aircrafts are spewing toxic chemicals as part of a nefarious and secret plot. The video, viewed more than 9,000 times on TikTok, shows screenshots of an Oct. 13 CNBC story headlined, “White House is pushing ahead research to cool Earth by reflecting back sunlight.” The person in the video then proceeds to show footage of vapor trails in the sky. But the CNBC story wasn’t “admitting” that chemtrails are real, and experts say the aerosol injection technology it discussed is not currently in use. The CNBC report looked at a White House plan to study ways to reduce the amount of sunlight that reaches Earth, in an effort to combat global warming. In passing a federal appropriations bill earlier this year, Congress directed federal agencies to coordinate with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop a five-year plan assessing the use of such solar and climate interventions. One possibility is the use of stratospheric aerosol injection, an idea taken from the climate effects of large volcanic eruptions. These eruptions emit sulfur into the atmosphere, where it turns into “highly reflective microscopic droplets,” said Ben Kravitz, an assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Indiana University. Those sulfur droplets “reflect some sunlight back to space, and it cools the planet a little bit,” he said in an email. “Stratospheric aerosol injection is built on that idea — if nature can cool the planet, maybe we can do it on purpose.” The idea is not without risks, Kravitz added, and the point of research is so that decision makers can weigh whether to use such technology. “Currently nobody is doing this,” he said. David Keith, a Harvard University professor who researches this field, likewise told the AP that this is “a discussion about a technology that is possible but is not now used.” Keith said in an email that aerosol injection would not leave contrails like those left by planes. “If someone were doing climate-altering stratospheric aerosol injections – the sky would probably look a little whiter and hazier, much like it looks in a big city,” Kravitz said.

    — Associated Press writer Angelo Fichera in Philadelphia contributed this report.

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    No suspected serial killer in Seattle, despite online rumor

    CLAIM: King County detectives have been notifying locals about a serial killer in Seattle after several women in a southern section of the city and the nearby city of Burien were found dead with their bodies posed in the same way.

    THE FACTS: The King County Sheriff’s Office and Seattle Police Department both said they are not investigating a suspected serial killer. The claims erupted on social media last weekend as Seattle residents warned each other about the alleged criminal. “King County Detectives have been notifying locals about a serial killer in Seattle right now,” read a tweet that was shared to Instagram, where it amassed nearly 40,000 likes. “Multiple women’s bodies have been discovered recently in the Burien and SODO area, apparently posed in the same way,” the post continued, referring to a district of downtown Seattle. “Serial killer warning in Seattle!” read another tweet, which included a screenshot of an email attributed to a local bar manager. The email claimed a killer had been targeting women in their 30s between 12 a.m. and 7 a.m. in the south Seattle area. The Seattle Police Department refuted the claims on Twitter and in an emailed statement, saying it did not have any serial homicide cases. The King County Sheriff’s Office, which is the main law enforcement agency for unincorporated areas of the county and 12 cities including Burien, also denied the claims on Twitter and by email. “The King County Sheriff’s Office is aware of unsubstantiated on-line social media reports that select death investigations, in the vicinity of South Park / SR509, may share similar characteristics,” the statement read. “At this time, the Sheriff’s Office has identified no evidence affirming this for any cases under our jurisdiction.” It’s unclear where the baseless rumors originated, though unsupported claims related to serial killers occasionally spread in cities across the country. The bar manager cited as the author of an email spreading the claims did not immediately respond to calls for comment.

    — Associated Press writer Ali Swenson in New York contributed this report.

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    Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck

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  • How do states ensure dead people’s ballots aren’t counted?

    How do states ensure dead people’s ballots aren’t counted?

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    How do states ensure dead people’s ballots aren’t counted?

    Election officials regularly check death records. In many states, vital statistics agencies send them monthly lists of people who have died, which officials use to update voter registration files.

    Election clerks may also check for voter deaths through other means, such as coordinating with motor vehicle departments to track canceled driver’s licenses, searching for published obituaries or processing letters from the deceased person’s estate.

    Even if a dead voter’s ballot mistakenly gets mailed, signature verification and voter fraud laws create additional safeguards against anyone else filling it out and submitting it. Voters who forge dead relatives’ signatures on ballots can face fines, probation or prison. And in some states, absentee voting requirements such as witness signatures or notarization add an extra barrier to prevent this rare form of voter fraud.

    After the 2020 presidential election, former President Donald Trump and his supporters claimed thousands of votes had been cast fraudulently on behalf of dead voters, even naming specific deceased people whose ballots were supposedly counted.

    But these claims, which spread in many states including Arizona, Virginia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia, were found to be false.

    When Arizona’s attorney general investigated claims that 282 dead people’s ballots were cast in 2020, he found just one case was substantiated.

    When Republican lawmakers in Michigan investigated a list of over 200 supposedly dead voters in Wayne County, they found just two. The first was due to a clerical error in which a son had been confused with his dead father and the second involved a 92-year-old woman who had submitted her ballot early, then died four days before the election.

    Whether or not a vote like hers counts depends on state law.

    At least 11 states — nine by statute and two based on attorney general opinions — prohibit counting votes from absentee voters who cast a ballot, then die before Election Day, while nine states specifically allow it, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Other states are silent on the matter.

    Election integrity groups scouring voter files often mistake a living voter for a deceased voter if they have similar names, birthdays or hometowns, resulting in false fraud claims, said Jason Roberts, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

    “You might think it’s weird that someone with the same name and the same date of birth died, but it’s actually not that strange when you think about a 350 million person country,” Roberts said. “It happens a lot.”

    There are occasional instances of voter fraud by impersonating a dead person. For example, a Las Vegas man admitted voting his dead wife’s ballot in 2020 and received a fine and probation for the crime. A Pennsylvania man who pleaded guilty to voting his dead mother’s ballot in 2020 was sentenced to five years of probation.

    However, Roberts said, only a handful of people try this type of fraud each election, making it “very, very rare.”

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    The AP is answering your questions about elections in this series. Submit them at FactCheck@AP.org. Read more here:

    How are mail-in and absentee ballots verified?

    Am I allowed to drop off a ballot for someone else?

    Can noncitizens vote in U.S. elections?

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  • NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

    NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

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    A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

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    Russian strikes in Kyiv didn’t destroy Zelenskyy’s office

    CLAIM: Ukrainian media is reporting that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office was destroyed by a missile strike.

    THE FACTS: The building wasn’t destroyed and the claim wasn’t reported by mainstream Ukrainian news outlets. Twitter accounts supporting Russia shared the baseless assertion that Zelenskyy’s office was among the buildings struck by a barrage of missile strikes in Ukraine’s capital on Monday. “ZELENSKY’S OFFICE WAS DESTROYED BY A MISSILE STRIKE: UKRAINIAN MEDIA,” wrote one Russian-aligned account, receiving more than 2,000 shares and 6,500 likes. The user reposted a video from a separate account called UkraineNews, which gives updates on the war. Though identified as “Ukrainian media,” UkraineNews often makes posts in support of Russia. The account shared a video on Monday of smoke rising over the skyline, suggesting in the caption that Zelesnkyy’s office may have been the target while stating the report was “unconfirmed.” But AP reporting and other images of the site show the government building where Zelenskyy works was not destroyed. AP journalists on the ground in Kyiv confirmed the building was not hit. Satellite images taken by Planet Labs Inc. and obtained by the AP capture an aerial view of the building on Monday that shows the structure still standing. Statements from the Office of the President of Ukraine on Monday and Tuesday made no mention of any strikes to its building, instead specifying that “civilian infrastructure” was targeted. Zelenskyy on Monday also filmed a video address outside of the Presidential Administration Building. The video captured much of the building’s exterior and courtyard, and no damage can be seen. In Kyiv, blasts struck in the Shevchenko district, which includes the historic old town and government offices, both Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko and Zelenskyy said. While some of the strikes hit near the government quarter, where parliament and other major landmarks are located, neither official gave any indication that those government buildings were hit. AP images of the damage show a crater in the ground and debris strewn about a playground at Taras Shevchenko Park, near the city center. Outside of Kyiv, strikes in 12 other regions Monday caused power outages and killed at least 19 people. Russia launched the widespread attacks in retaliation for an explosion last weekend that damaged a bridge linking the country to the Crimean Peninsula.

    — Associated Press writer Sophia Tulp in New York contributed this report.

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    Hoax tweet spreads false claim of Pelosi buying cannabis stocks

    CLAIM: Reuters reported that U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently purchased 10 million shares in a cannabis company.

    THE FACTS: Reuters never published such a report, and financial disclosures show no record of Pelosi making such a stock purchase. After President Joe Biden announced on Oct. 6 that he is pardoning thousands of Americans convicted of “simple possession” of marijuana under federal law, social media users shared a hoax tweet suggesting Pelosi stood to profit from the move. The posts featured screenshots of the tweet, which was made to look like it came from a popular Twitter account, Breaking911. However, the tweet was actually posted by an account with a different username. “BREAKING: NANCY PELOSI PURCHASED 10,000,000 SHARES OF $WEED 4 DAYS AGO :REUTERS,” read the tweet in the screenshot. A second tweet noted that shares of Canopy Growth Corporation, which trades under WEED on the Toronto Stock Exchange, were up on Oct. 6. But Reuters never published this claim, and there is no evidence to suggest Pelosi has recently bought shares of Canopy Growth Corporation, nor the Roundhill Cannabis exchange-traded fund, which trades under WEED on the New York Stock Exchange. Heather Carpenter, a spokesperson for Reuters, confirmed in an email to the AP that the news agency did not publish the claim. “This is not a Reuters story,” Carpenter wrote. Online records of Pelosi’s financial disclosures show no such purchase by the congresswoman or her family filed with the Clerk of the House of Representatives, although lawmakers have 45 days to report trades under a 2012 law called the Stock Act. A spokesperson for Pelosi’s office said the claim in the tweet was not true. “No such transaction has been made,” Drew Hammill, Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff, told the AP in an email. Pelosi has said she does not trade stocks herself. However, her husband, Paul Pelosi, is an investment banker who has traded tens of millions of dollars worth of stocks and options. Critics have argued that members of Congress and their families should not be allowed to trade individual stocks at all, because they may have the opportunity to profit off insider information gained through their official duties.

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    Posts mischaracterize Home Depot political donations

    CLAIM: Home Depot recently donated $1.75 million to Hershel Walker’s U.S. Senate campaign.

    THE FACTS: Bernard “Bernie” Marcus, a Home Depot co-founder who left the company in 2002, made contributions totaling $1.75 million to a political action committee supporting Walker, not The Home Depot. Social media users this week conflated donations made by the former Home Depot executive with the political spending history of the company itself, amid the pivotal race for a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia. Walker, a political newcomer and former University of Georgia football star, is looking to flip the seat held by his Democratic opponent, incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock, as Republicans try to take control of the Senate during the upcoming midterm elections. Commenting on the race on Monday, one Twitter user called for people to boycott Home Depot. “Home Depot just backed Hershel Walker with $1.75 million. Please shop at Lowe’s,” the user wrote. The claim surfaced on Oct. 7 when another user tweeted: “Will you join me in boycotting Home Depot for donating $1.75 MILLION to Herschel Walker’s campaign?” That post prompted a denial from the company. “The company has not contributed to this campaign,” Home Depot’s account responded. “The contribution was from our co-founder Bernie Marcus, who left The Home Depot more than 20 years ago.” Federal Election Commission data confirms that neither The Home Depot, nor its PAC, The Home Depot PAC, have donated directly to Walker’s campaign or related PACs set up to exclusively support his campaign. Instead, FEC records show two donations equaling $1.75 million made by Marcus, whose employer is listed as The Marcus Foundation, to a PAC dedicated to supporting Walker. One donation for $1 million was made by Marcus to 34N22 PAC on March 21, 2022, and another donation of $750,000 was made to the same PAC on Nov. 8, 2021, according to the database. Marcus co-founded Home Depot in 1978 and served as chairman of the board until his retirement in 2002. “His views do not represent the company,” spokesperson Sara Gorman wrote in a statement, adding that, “The Home Depot PAC hasn’t donated to Walker’s or Warnock’s campaigns.” FEC data for the 2021-2022 election cycle shows the PAC has donated to a number of campaigns and PACs on both sides of the aisle. A search of such records shows The Home Depot PAC donated a combined $90,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee from 2021-2022. The NRSC works to elect Republicans to the Senate. It has used funds to launch advertisements in Georgia against Walker’s opponent, Warnock. It also donated $30,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, according to the FEC database.

    — Sophia Tulp

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    Stacey Abrams did not lobby against major Atlanta events

    CLAIM: Stacey Abrams lobbied for moving Major League Baseball’s 2021 All-Star Game and Atlanta’s 2022 Music Midtown festival out of Georgia.

    THE FACTS: Abrams, the Democratic candidate in Georgia’s gubernatorial race, did not advocate for either event to be moved out of state. As Georgia’s gubernatorial race heats up in its final month, the false claims have re-emerged on social media, suggesting she advocated for the moves in response to voting and gun legislation backed by Republicans. “Never forget. Stacey Abrams lobbied to move the Allstars game and Music Midtown. She cost Georgia 150 million plus. Not Kemp,” multiple posts on Facebook stated. Abrams, who is running against Republican incumbent Brian Kemp, has fought against the legislation in question. However, a review of Abrams’ public comments shows she did not lobby for moving either of these events out of Georgia, and in fact spoke out against both moves. MLB pulled its 2021 All-Star Game from Atlanta in April last year over the league’s objections to changes to Georgia’s voting laws, which included new restrictions on voting by mail and greater legislative control over election administration, the AP reported. Prior to MLB’s decision, Abrams urged against boycotts of Georgia in a video on Twitter. “To our friends across the country, please do not boycott us,” she said. In a statement posted to her Twitter account the same day MLB made its announcement about the All-Star Game, Abrams wrote: “Like many Georgians, I am disappointed that the MLB is relocating the All-Star game,” adding, “As I have stated, I respect boycotts, although I don’t want to see Georgia families hurt by lost events and jobs.” Asked in a subsequent AP interview whether she supports corporate boycotts such as the All-Star Game move, Abrams responded: “I do not believe that a boycott at this moment is beneficial to the victims of these bills.” In August 2022, Music Midtown announced that “due to circumstances beyond our control, Music Midtown will no longer be taking place this year.” A reason for the cancellation wasn’t given. However, the AP reported that some believed the decision was the result of a 2019 Georgia Supreme Court ruling that limited the ability of private companies to ban guns on public property. This decision stemmed from a 2014 state law that expanded the locations where guns were allowed. The location of the canceled festival was Piedmont Park, a public-private partnership. “In dire economic times for so many Georgians, this cancellation will cost Georgia’s economy a proven $50 million,” Abrams lamented in a statement on her campaign website. “This means that small businesses and workers who rely on events like Music Midtown and their tremendous economic impact have now lost incomes that help put food on the table and a roof over their heads.” Alex Floyd, a spokesperson for Abrams’ campaign, confirmed to the AP that she did not lobby for the outcome of either event. “Stacey Abrams has never supported the All-Star Game boycott or the cancellation of Music Midtown, and in fact has spent her career trying to bring more business and opportunities to Georgia,” Floyd wrote in an email.

    — Associated Press writer Melissa Goldin in New York contributed this report.

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    Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck

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  • How are mail-in and absentee ballots verified?

    How are mail-in and absentee ballots verified?

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    How are mail-in and absentee ballots verified?

    Whether a state requires voters to request an absentee ballot or participates in universal mail-in voting, all ballots cast by mail or dropped off at a drop box are vetted to ensure their legitimacy.

    Election officials log every mail ballot so voters cannot request more than one. Those ballots also are logged when they are returned, checked against registration records and, in many cases, voter signatures are on file to ensure the voter assigned to the ballot is the one who cast it.

    Still, mail ballots are one of the most frequent targets of misinformation around voting, despite fraud being rare.

    Different states have different ballot verification protocols. All states require a voter’s signature, while some states have additional precautions, like having bipartisan teams compare that signature to a signature on file, requiring the signature to be notarized or requiring a witness to sign.

    In Arkansas, you must return proof of voter registration or a copy of your ID with the ballot. In states including Georgia, Minnesota and Ohio, you have to submit your driver’s license number or state ID card number, which will be compared with voter registration records before your vote is counted.

    In states that require voters to submit applications to receive absentee ballots, the application typically includes several pieces of identifying information to ensure you are who you say you are. In some cases, that includes a copy of your photo ID.

    In almost every state, mailed ballots can be tracked online through a unique bar code on the envelope, allowing voters to watch the movement of their ballot until it is counted. Ballot security features and ballot sorting at election offices help weed out any counterfeits, though election officials say fake ballots have not been a problem in U.S. elections. A Georgia investigation into allegations of counterfeit ballots in the 2020 election found no evidence to back up the claims.

    Secure ballot drop boxes are placed in public locations and emptied only by trained election staff, to prevent anyone else from tampering with the votes inside.

    As with other forms of election fraud, harsh penalties for voter fraud by mailed ballot act as another deterrent. Depending on the circumstance, voter fraud charges can result in a fine, prison time or both.

    Despite widespread claims of mail-in and absentee ballot fraud, the reality is it’s exceedingly rare. The Brennan Center for Justice in 2017 ranked the risk of ballot fraud at 0.00004% to 0.0009%, based on studies of past elections.

    Meanwhile, a May 2022 Associated Press survey of states that allowed the use of drop boxes in the 2020 presidential election found no cases of fraud, vandalism or theft involving drop boxes that could have affected the results.

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    The AP is answering your questions about elections in this series. Submit them at FactCheck@AP.org.

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  • Am I allowed to drop off a ballot for someone else?

    Am I allowed to drop off a ballot for someone else?

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    Am I allowed to drop off a ballot for someone else?

    In most states, the answer is yes — but there might be restrictions.

    For example, some states, like Arizona, only allow caregivers, family members or household members to drop off a ballot for someone else. Other states, like California, allow for a ballot to submitted by anyone chosen by the voter as long as they are not paid per ballot they collect.

    A few states require designated agents to sign a document confirming they have the authority to deliver someone’s ballot. And a few states explicitly prohibit dropping off someone else’s ballot. Other states don’t have laws on ballot collection at all.

    In total, more than half of states have laws that explicitly allow a third party to return a completed ballot, according to a tally from the National Conference of State Legislatures.

    Laws allowing ballot collection are designed to make voting more convenient, and to make it possible for people who can’t travel to deliver a ballot on their own. Political groups and campaigns from both parties have run ballot-collection programs with the goal of boosting turnout and helping older, homebound, disabled or rural voters get their ballots returned.

    However, in 2020, when the use of drop boxes spiked because of the coronavirus pandemic, some criticized the practice. Former President Donald Trump and others argued that ballot collection, often pejoratively called “ballot harvesting,” increased the risk that someone would try to illegally vote on someone else’s behalf or coerce them to vote a certain way. Surveys after the 2020 election found that voters who cast ballots for President Joe Biden were far more likely to report voting by mail than voters for Trump.

    Election security experts say that voter fraud is rare among all forms of voting, including by mail and at drop boxes. They point to a 2018 congressional election in North Carolina, when a Republican political operative and his staff illegally gathered ballots and forged signatures, as one of the few instances of voter fraud related to ballot collection. That election was overturned.

    After the 2020 election, a discredited film claimed without evidence that a multistate network of Democrat-aligned ballot “mules” were paid to illegally collect and drop off ballots in five states. But the film showed no evidence that the individuals it showed on surveillance tapes were part of a ballot scheme, and a state investigation found that at least one person featured in the film was legally dropping off ballots of family members. The film also pointed to cellphone geolocation data, which experts say is not precise enough to identify whether someone used a drop box or simply traveled near it. Drop boxes are frequently placed intentionally in public, high-traffic spaces.

    An Associated Press survey in May 2022 found that among states that used drop boxes in the 2020 presidential election, none reported instances of drop boxes being involved in fraud that could have affected the results.

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    The AP is answering your questions about elections in this series. Submit them at: FactCheck@AP.org.

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  • Can noncitizens vote in US elections?

    Can noncitizens vote in US elections?

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    Can noncitizens vote in U.S. elections?

    Federal law bans noncitizens from voting in federal elections, including races for president, vice president, Senate or House of Representatives.

    The 1996 law states that noncitizens who vote illegally will face a fine, imprisonment or both. Noncitizens who cast a ballot and get caught may also face deportation.

    When people in the U.S. register to vote, they confirm under penalty of perjury that they are U.S. citizens. Several states also verify that registration against federal and state databases.

    Some politicians and pundits have raised alarm that noncitizens could be voting illegally in high numbers. Studies show this isn’t happening, according to Ron Hayduk, a political science professor at San Francisco State University who studies noncitizen voting laws.

    While there have been anecdotal reports of noncitizens registering and casting ballots, “the incidence of such occurrences is infinitesimal,” Hayduk said.

    Research by the Brennan Center for Justice in 2017 looked at 42 jurisdictions in the 2016 election, and reported that of 23.5 million votes cast, election officials only found about 30 cases of potential noncitizen voting that they referred for prosecution or further investigation.

    More recent investigations also haven’t shown proof of widespread noncitizen voting. A Georgia audit of its voter rolls conducted this year found fewer than 2,000 instances of noncitizens attempting to register to vote over the last 25 years, none of which succeeded. Millions of new Georgia voters registered during that time period.

    Federal law doesn’t stop states or municipalities from granting noncitizens the right to vote in local races — and a handful have, including 11 towns in Maryland and two in Vermont. New York City this year passed a law that would allow legally documented noncitizens and “Dreamers” to vote for mayor and other elected officials, but a judge blocked the move in June.

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    The AP is answering your questions about elections in this series. Submit them at FactCheck@AP.org. Read more here:

    How are mail-in and absentee ballots verified?

    Am I allowed to drop off a ballot for someone else?

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    Source link

  • NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

    NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

    [ad_1]

    A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

    ___

    Ad misleads on treaty regulating global arms trade

    CLAIM: President Joe Biden just announced that he is adding the U.S. as a signatory to the United Nations “Small Arms Treaty,” which would “establish an international gun control registry” in which other countries can “track the ‘end user’ of every rifle, shotgun, and handgun sold in the world.”

    THE FACTS: There is no “U.N. Small Arms Treaty.” A separate U.N. agreement, the Arms Trade Treaty, regulates the international trade of a range of weapons, but does not track domestic gun sales. The false claim about an “international gun control registry” was shared in a Facebook advertisement by a gun rights group stoking fears about threats to the Second Amendment. The group, the “American Firearms Association,” claims in its Facebook ad that Biden “has just announced that he is adding America as a signatory to the U.N. Small Arms Treaty, setting the stage for a full ratification vote in the U.S. Senate.” “The U.N. Small Arms Treaty would establish an international gun control registry, allowing Communist China, European socialists, and 3rd World dictators to track the ‘end user’ of every rifle, shotgun, and handgun sold in the world,” continues the post, which links to a petition asking for users’ contact information. The post calls on supporters of the Second Amendment to oppose the treaty. But there is no treaty called the “U.N. Small Arms Treaty,” and the treaty that is being referenced does not record private gun sales in any country, experts say. The actual treaty, the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty, deals not only with small arms such as rifles and pistols, but battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, large-caliber artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships and more, the AP has reported. The U.N. in 2013 adopted the treaty to keep weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists and human rights violators. The treaty prohibits countries that ratify it from exporting conventional weapons if they violate arms embargoes, or if they promote acts of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes. It does encourage its parties to maintain national records regarding exports of conventional arms and says such records should include the “end user.” But that’s a recommendation about recording exports that a country makes to another country, not gun sales to individuals within a country, said Jennifer Erickson, an associate professor of political science and international studies at Boston College. Experts note that the treaty was written to explicitly make clear it has no bearing on domestic gun rights or sales. The treaty’s preamble, for example, states that the agreement is “Reaffirming the sovereign right of any State to regulate and control conventional arms exclusively within its territory, pursuant to its own legal or constitutional system.” The U.N. has “no gun control registry in terms of private ownership, whatsoever,” Erickson said. Erickson said the U.S. government already uses “end-use” monitoring by recording where it sends weapons. “There is only in the Arms Trade Treaty a focus on cross-border transfers, so not domestic sales or ownership,” said Rachel Stohl, vice president of research programs at the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan think tank focused on international security. “It’s really looking at sales between governments. And it applies to the entire range of conventional weapons, not just small arms and light weapons.” The U.S. signed the treaty in 2013, though the Senate never ratified it — which means the country is a signatory of the agreement, but not an official party and bound by it. In 2019, Trump announced that he was revoking the country’s status as a signatory, though that move was symbolic. The U.N. still lists the U.S. as a signatory to the treaty, though in a footnote online it acknowledges that, in a July 2019 communication, the U.S. said it did not intend to become a party to the treaty and that it has no legal obligations in relation to it. Contrary to the ad’s claim, Biden has not yet taken any action to reverse the U.S.’s public position on the treaty, Stohl said. An inquiry to one of the directors of the American Firearms Association was not immediately returned.

    — Associated Press writer Angelo Fichera in Philadelphia contributed this report.

    Baseless claims about safety of mRNA vaccines circulate online

    CLAIM: Humans and other mammals injected with an mRNA vaccine die within five years.

    THE FACTS: There is no scientific evidence to suggest humans or other mammals given an mRNA vaccine die within five years, experts told the AP. Social media users are reviving concerns that mRNA-based vaccines, including those that are used to combat COVID-19, are extremely deadly. “No mammal injected with mRNA has ever survived longer than 5 years. The die-off has begun,” one user on Twitter wrote in a post that’s been liked or shared more than 17,000 times. But there’s no scientific proof that the mRNA vaccination shortens life expectancy or has led to mass die offs in humans or other mammals since research began on them decades ago, experts told the AP “Nothing of the scale suggested has happened,” Dr. Daniel Kuritzkes, chief of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, told the AP. “The vast majority of the millions who have been injected are doing just fine.” Vaccines utilizing messenger RNA, or mRNA, teach cells how to make a protein that will trigger an immune response that protects a person from becoming seriously ill from a disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The molecule was first discovered in the early 1960s and research into its uses in medical treatment progressed into the 1970s and 1980s, according to Johns Hopkins University’s School of Public Health. A flu vaccine based on mRNA was tested on mice in the 1990s, but the first vaccines for rabies and influenza weren’t tested on humans until recently. Kuritzkes said no deaths from those vaccines were reported in those trials. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people worldwide have been inoculated against COVID-19 in the last couple of years and reports of death after vaccination remain rare. Healthcare providers are required to report any death after a COVID-19 shot to the federal government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), even if it’s unclear whether the vaccine was the cause. More than 600 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in the U.S. from December 2020 through last week, according to the CDC. During that time, there have been more than 16,500 preliminary reports of death, or 0.0027% of those that have received a COVID-19 vaccine. Of those, the CDC has identified just nine deaths causally associated with rare blood clots caused by the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is not mRNA based like those produced by Pfizer and Moderna. Kuritzkes also notes that mRNA only lasts in the body for a short period of time before rapidly degrading, making it unlikely that it would cause long term effects. “The fact that we’re just now getting to the five-year mark for some of the earliest studies is not evidence that people die from the vaccines,” he said. “Just evidence that five years have yet to elapse for many trials. Sort of like saying nobody who voted in the 2020 presidential election has lived more than five years.”

    — Associated Press writer Philip Marcelo in New York contributed this report.

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    Video of traffic at the Finnish-Russian border misrepresented

    CLAIM: Video shows lines of cars waiting at the Russian-Finnish border after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial mobilization of reservists on Wednesday amid the war in Ukraine.

    THE FACTS: The video was filmed at the Vaalimaa border crossing point between Russia and Finland on Aug. 29, weeks before Putin announced the partial mobilization of Russian reservists to Ukraine. Following Putin’s announcement, social media users misrepresented a video showing traffic at the border crossing point in Finland, about a three hour drive from St. Petersburg, Russia. The original video, which was posted to YouTube and TikTok on Sept. 19, shows a long line of cars at the border crossing point. Social media users then took the clip out of context, falsely claiming that it captured Russians fleeing to Finland. “#Breaking: just in – The traffic jam at the border with#Russia/#Finland has pilled up to 35KM and is rising by the hour, it is the only border who is still open for Russian civilians with shengen visas, after#Putin announced he will send 300.000 new troops to#Ukraine,” a tweet with more than 2.7 million views falsely claimed. Igor Parri, the TikTok user who posted the original video confirmed to The Associated Press in an email that he filmed it on Aug. 29. He sent the AP the original video to verify that he filmed it and noted that the video “was just depicting the quite typical line” at the border. The Finish border authority on Wednesday publicly responded to the claims circulating widely on social media, noting that traffic conditions at the border remained normal. “Situation at Finnish Russian border is normal, both at green border and in border traffic,” Matti Pitkäniitty, a senior official with the Finnish border authority wrote in a statement posted to Twitter. “Just talked to our officers in charge. There is normal queuing in border traffic…” Pitkäniitty then tweeted on Thursday that traffic from Russia was at a “higher level than usual,” but was comparable to weekend traffic. In a statement to reporters on Thursday, Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said that the country was considering ways to reduce Russian transit to Finland, after Putin’s announcement. Putin’s announcement on Wednesday sparked anti-war demonstrations across the country that resulted in almost 1,200 arrests, the AP reported. Some Russians rushed to buy plane tickets to flee the country.

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    Florida ranks 48th in teacher pay, not 9th

    CLAIM: When the Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took office, Florida ranked 26th in the nation for teacher pay. Today the state ranks 9th in teacher pay.

    THE FACTS: Florida most recently ranked 48th in the nation in average public school teacher pay and was ranked 47th when DeSantis took office, according to the National Education Association, which compiles the data annually. The Florida Republican Party misled social media users this month when it posted on its verified Twitter and Facebook accounts that the state was among the best in the nation for teacher pay. “When Governor DeSantis took office Florida ranked 26th in the nation for teacher pay, today we are 9th,” the party wrote. “Every year he fights to ensure Florida teachers get the support and funding they need.” However, national salary data contradicts those numbers. The National Center for Education Statistics and several other online sources for such data get their salary information from the NEA, the nation’s largest teacher’s union, which compiles most of its data from state education departments. NEA data shows that in the 2018-2019 school year, when DeSantis entered office, Florida ranked 47th in the nation for average public school teacher pay, giving teachers an average annual salary of $48,314. It ranked 48th in the 2020-2021 school year, giving teachers an average of $51,009. The state is estimated to continue to rank 48th for the 2021-2022 school year, according to Staci Maiers, an NEA spokesperson. The governor’s press office in a news release in March touted the 9th-in-the-nation ranking, but referred to starting salary, rather than average teacher salary. “In 2020, the average starting salary for a teacher in Florida was $40,000 (26th in the nation), and with today’s funding, it will now be at least $47,000 (9th in the nation),” the release said. Those numbers also aren’t an exact match for the NEA’s data, which show that in the 2019-2020 school year, Florida ranked 29th in the nation for average public school teacher starting salary, according to Maiers. Estimates for the 2020-2021 school year show Florida ranking 16th in the nation on this benchmark. And based on the data from that school year, which is the most recent data available, a $47,000 starting salary would place Florida at 11th in the nation, not 9th. Cassandra Palelis, press secretary for the Florida Department of Education, explained that the press release from March featured previous data from the NEA, which was later updated. She said Florida’s estimated starting salary for the 2022-2023 school year is more than $48,000 per year, which would rank 9th in the nation according to NEA data. The Florida Republican Party didn’t respond to emailed requests for comment.

    — Associated Press writer Ali Swenson in New York contributed this report.

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    ___

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  • NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

    NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

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    A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

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    Harris comments on addressing climate inequity misrepresented

    CLAIM: Vice President Kamala Harris said that Hurricane Ian relief will be distributed based on race, with communities of color receiving aid first.

    THE FACTS: Speaking at the Democratic National Committee’s Women’s Leadership Forum in Washington last week, Harris discussed distributing resources equitably to help vulnerable groups, such as communities of color, recover from disasters related to climate change. She did not describe the structure that would be used to allocate aid to victims of the recent hurricane. Widespread social media posts mischaracterized Harris’ comments during her conversation with actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas to claim she said communities of color would be prioritized in the distribution of relief for this storm. A Facebook video with a clip of Harris at the event on Sept. 29 alleged: “Kamala Harris tells hurricane victims in Florida they may not get aid because of their skin color?!” The video was viewed more than 211,000 times. The post refers to Harris’ response to a multipart question from Chopra Jonas in which she asked first about Hurricane Ian aid, and then, separately, about long-term efforts related to climate change. “Can you talk a little bit about the relief efforts, obviously, of Hurricane Ian and what the administration has been doing to address the climate crisis in the states?” Chopra Jonas asked, according to a full recording of the event. Chopra Jonas continued: “But — and just a little follow up, because this is important to me: We consider the global implications of emissions, right? The poorest countries are affected the most. They contributed the least and are affected the most. So how should voters in the U.S. feel about the administration’s long-term goals when it comes to being an international influencer on this topic?” Harris mentioned Hurricane Ian in passing, but did not talk about specific relief efforts the federal government would undertake. She instead referenced money allocated to address climate change in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and spoke about what she believes needs to be done to address the effects of climate change broadly, including the equitable distribution of resources. Pivoting to address the second part of Chopra Jonas’ question related to addressing disparities, Harris continued: “But also what we need to do to help restore communities and build communities back up in a way that they can be resilient — not to mention, adapt — to these extreme conditions, which are part of the future.” Harris then elaborated: “In particular on the disparities, as you have described rightly, which is that it is our lowest income communities and our communities of color that are most impacted by these extreme conditions and impacted by issues that are not of their own making,” she said, adding: “We have to address this in a way that is about giving resources based on equity, understanding that we fight for equality, but we also need to fight for equity; understanding that not everyone starts out at the same place. And if we want people to be in an equal place, sometimes we have to take into account those disparities and do that work.” Deputy White House Press Secretary Andrew Bates told the AP that claims Harris announced in this response that Ian aid would be race-based are “inaccurate.” He said Harris was discussing long-term goals for addressing climate change, having “explicitly moved on to answering the second question.” FEMA Director of Public Affairs Jaclyn Rothenberg also told the AP that claims the process will be race-based are false, and that Hurricane Ian aid will be given to all those affected by the storm. “The Vice President was talking about a different issue at that time and her comments were focused on long term climate investments,” she wrote in an email.

    — Associated Press writer Melissa Goldin in New York contributed this report.

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    World Cup ‘rules’ graphic created by citizens group, not Qatari officials

    CLAIM: Qatar’s government created an infographic with instructions on how to behave during the 2022 World Cup, including rules that ban alcohol, homosexuality and dating.

    THE FACTS: The infographic being shared online ahead of the 2022 World Cup, which opens in Qatar next month, was not created or released by the government there, according to the state agency in charge of organizing the event. It was created by a Qatari citizens group and published on social media as part of a campaign called “Reflect Your Respect.” The graphic, shared on social media with claims that it listed official rules on how to behave in the Muslim-majority country during the event, states: “Qatar welcomes you! Reflect your respect to the religion and culture of Qatari people by avoiding these behaviors.” The poster cites eight specific examples, including “drinking alcohol, homosexuality, immodesty, profanity,” and not respecting places of worship. Playing loud music, dating and taking people’s pictures without permission are also noted. Images representing each of those areas are featured on the infographic and are covered by a circle with a slash through it. “Qatar’s rules for people who will attend the World Cup 2022 in the country,” a tweet with the infographic claimed. But the infographic does not reflect official policies from Qatar related to conduct during the World Cup, according to the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy, the state entity organizing the tournament. “The ‘Qatar Welcomes You’ graphic circulating on social media is not from an official source and contains factually incorrect information,” a committee spokesperson wrote in a statement to the AP. “We strongly urge fans and visitors to rely solely on official sources from tournament organisers for travel advice for this year’s FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022.” Qatar is easing its stance on alcohol for the tournament. World Cup organizers have finalized a policy that would allow alcoholic beer to be served to fans inside stadiums and fan zones, the AP has reported. Qatari law calls for a prison sentence of one to three years for adults convicted of consensual gay or lesbian sex. Despite same-sex relationships being criminalized, the AP reported that Qatari officials insist that LGBTQ couples would be welcomed and accepted in Qatar for the World Cup, complying with FIFA rules promoting tolerance and inclusion. Still a senior leader overseeing security for the tournament told the AP earlier this year that rainbow flags may be taken away from fans to protect them from being attacked for promoting gay rights. Planners involved with Reflect Your Respect did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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    No, COVID shots don’t change human DNA to a ‘triple helix’

    CLAIM: COVID-19 mRNA vaccines alter recipients’ DNA by changing its shape to a “triple helix.”

    THE FACTS: There is no evidence that the COVID-19 vaccines are editing humans’ DNA, experts have told the AP. The false claim, which has been shared repeatedly on social media, has surfaced again, this time in posts that allege the mRNA shots change DNA to a “triple helix.” DNA is made of two linked strands that appear like a twisted ladder, referred to as a double helix. RNA is closely related to DNA, and one type, called messenger RNA or mRNA, sends instructions to the cell for different purposes. The mRNA in the COVID-19 vaccines helps train the body to recognize a protein from the coronavirus to trigger an immune response. In one TikTok video that also appeared on Instagram, a woman claims: “The magic potion, if you actually read the patents, it is adding a triple helix.” Another Instagram video claims that “this new technology they came out with introduces a third strand, through mRNA messaging technology it actually breaks a strand and puts in a third strand, which creates a triple helix.” But the videos distort the science, experts said. The video attempts to back up its assertion by showing language from a Moderna patent application published in 2014 that at one point states: “According to the present invention, the nucleic acids, modified RNA or primary construct may be administered with, or further encode one or more of RNAi agents, siRNAs, shRNAs, miRNAs, miRNA binding sites, antisense RNAs, ribozymes, catalytic DNA, tRNA, RNAs that induce triple helix formation, aptamers or vectors, and the like.” But Dr. Daniel Kuritzkes, chief of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, told the AP the patent document was discussing RNA presenting as a triple helix, not changing humans’ DNA to a triple helix. “If you actually read the patent, it has nothing to do with forming a triple helix of the RNA therapeutic with the host DNA,” Kuritzkes said. It’s that the RNA molecule could theoretically form a triple helix, he said. For certain therapeutic applications, a triple helical RNA could be useful, he said. The patent was broad and not specific to Moderna’s eventual COVID-19 vaccine. “The messenger RNA from the vaccine does not form a triple helix, and it certainly doesn’t intercalate with the DNA to form a triple helix in any way,” Kuritzkes said. Experts emphasized that the mRNA in COVID-19 vaccines is not transforming humans’ DNA. “There is no mechanism for them to alter anyone’s DNA,” said Emily Bruce, an assistant professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at the University of Vermont. “It’s something that’s temporarily translated into protein and then the body gets rid of it.”

    — Associated Press writer Angelo Fichera in Philadelphia contributed this report.

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    Inflation is worse than it was a year ago, despite online claims

    CLAIM: New data shows that inflation has dropped to half of what it was a year ago, marking a win for President Joe Biden.

    THE FACTS: While inflation has slowed in recent months, the latest government estimates show that prices are still higher in August 2022 than they were in August 2021. As steep consumer price hikes continue to strain Americans’ budgets, a tweet downplaying the severity of recent inflation spread online. “BREAKING: New data has dropped that inflation has dropped to half of what it was a year ago,” read the tweet, which amassed more than 28,000 likes. ”That’s a Biden Win!” The tweet’s claim isn’t supported by data, economists told the AP. While the Consumer Price Index, a measure of change in consumer prices and a common metric of inflation published by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, was up just 0.1% in August from July, the index is still up 8.3% since August 2021. “There is no hard evidence of either inflation falling sharply on a monthly basis, on a quarterly basis, on a semi-annual basis, on a yearly basis, or announcement of any substantial revision of official statistics,” said Alessandro Rebucci, an associate professor of economics at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. The Bureau of Labor Statistics did report that consumer prices increased 0.3% in August 2021 from July 2021, which is a higher monthly rate of change compared to the 0.1% monthly increase reported in August 2022. While the monthly change in consumer prices was lower in August 2022 than it was in August 2021, comparing those rates alone doesn’t accurately reflect how prices have changed during that 12-month timeframe, experts say. Lower gas prices slowed U.S. inflation for the second straight month in August, but most other prices kept rising, the AP reported. This jump in “core” prices, which exclude volatile food and energy costs, outpaced expectations and continues to pose a significant burden for U.S. households. “There’s still a fair amount of inflation embedded in the economy,” said Stephan Weiler, a professor of economics at Colorado State University, adding that Americans’ overall purchasing power has been reduced by 8.3%. The August CPI “basically means that things are getting more expensive,” said Yun Pei, an assistant professor of economics at the University at Buffalo. He characterized the idea that inflation has been halved over the last year as “clearly not true.”

    — Associated Press writer Josh Kelety in Phoenix contributed this report.

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  • FACT FOCUS: Sorting papers and facts in an ex-bowling alley

    FACT FOCUS: Sorting papers and facts in an ex-bowling alley

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    At a rally for Nevada Republicans on Saturday, former President Donald Trump argued against the federal probe into the storage of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate by falsely suggesting that past presidents did the same thing.

    Trump claimed that Barack Obama moved “truckloads” of documents to a former furniture store in Chicago, that Bill Clinton carted records “from the White House to a former car dealership in Arkansas,” and that George H.W. Bush “took millions of documents to a former bowling alley and a former Chinese restaurant where they combined them.”

    In reality, National Archives and Records Administration staff, not the former presidents, transported presidential records to these facilities for temporary sorting and storage, following security protocols in the process, NARA statements and Associated Press reporting show. The agency leased the buildings from the General Services Administration, it said in a statement Tuesday.

    “All such temporary facilities met strict archival and security standards, and have been managed and staffed exclusively by NARA employees,” NARA’s emailed statement read. “Reports that indicate or imply that those Presidential records were in the possession of the former Presidents or their representatives, after they left office, or that the records were housed in substandard conditions, are false and misleading.”

    That’s very different from Trump harboring classified documents from his own presidency in various storage areas at his Florida estate, said Timothy Naftali, a professor of public service and history at New York University.

    “Obviously, it takes time to build a presidential library. During that period of time, the National Archives has to put these presidential records somewhere safe,” Naftali said. “They are not put in closets in public clubs.”

    A spokesperson for Trump did not respond to a request for comment.

    Here’s a closer look at the facts.

    TRUMP: Bush “took millions of documents to a former bowling alley and a former Chinese restaurant where they combined them. So they’re in a bowling alley slash Chinese restaurant.”

    THE FACTS: While the idea of the elder Bush sneaking documents to a combination bowling alley and Chinese restaurant inspired colorful internet reactions, it’s not accurate.

    NARA archivists, not Bush, transported the documents to what had once been Chimney Hill Bowl in College Station, Texas, according to AP reporting at the time. They converted it into a warehouse, swapping bowling lanes for shelved storage where they could store the boxes of documents. To fit everything, they also co-opted a former Chinese restaurant next door.

    Under the Presidential Records Act, NARA has custody of all presidential records from former administrations. The agency is responsible for sorting through the documents and storing them securely until a presidential library can be built to house them.

    In the case of Bush’s documents, the temporary storage facility NARA archivists used was protected by guards, television monitors and electronic detectors while documents were sorted, the AP reported at the time. They were later moved to the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, also in College Station, where they reside today.

    Trump’s comments aimed to diminish the fact that he held classified documents in Mar-a-Lago by saying Bush held his own documents in an old bowling alley, Naftali said.

    “But that’s complete nonsense,” he said. “These are buildings National Archives took over, renovated to meet archival standards and security, and then they put the materials there.”

    Benjamin Hufbauer, a professor at the University of Louisville who researches presidential libraries, agreed Trump’s claim was not correct. “It’s really an apples to oranges kind of thing,” he said.

    ___

    TRUMP: Clinton “took millions of documents from the White House to a former car dealership in Arkansas.”

    THE FACTS: Clinton didn’t take documents to an ex-car dealership, NARA did.

    NARA announced in May 2000 that it would be transporting documents from Clinton’s presidency to a Little Rock, Arkansas, storage facility that used to be the Balch Motor Company. The facility, which NARA rented, was less than 2 miles from what later became the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum, where the documents are stored today.

    ___

    TRUMP: Obama “moved more than 20 truckloads, over 33 million pages of documents, both classified and unclassified, to a poorly-built and totally unsafe former furniture store located in a rather bad neighborhood in Chicago with no security, by the way.”

    THE FACTS: Again, NARA, not Obama, transported these documents — and followed its own storage standards in the process, the agency said.

    Roughly 30 million unclassified Obama administration documents reside in a Chicago-area building that at one point belonged to the Plunkett furniture company, according to county and local government records.

    These documents are stored in accordance with the agency’s archival storage standards, according to NARA. Those standards include things like fire safety, pest management and security guidelines for certain types of documents.

    Comments a NARA official gave to the city’s zoning commission prior to the end of Obama’s term also stipulated that the facility would be guarded overnight.

    The administration’s classified documents are stored in separate secure locations in the Washington, D.C., area.

    ___

    This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.

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  • FACT FOCUS: Food plant fires fuel conspiracy theory

    FACT FOCUS: Food plant fires fuel conspiracy theory

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    The fire at a Perdue Farms soybean facility in Virginia on Saturday was relatively small. Firefighters had it under control about an hour after arriving and the plant remains fully operational.

    “It was an accidental fire,” said Capt. Steven Bradley, a spokesperson for the Chesapeake Fire Department, attributing it to an equipment malfunction. “Nothing suspicious.”

    Try telling that to the internet, where the incident became the latest fodder for an unfounded and growing conspiracy theory alleging that fires at various U.S. food processing plants and other facilities are part of a deliberate effort to undermine the food supply.

    The baseless narrative has spread widely as Russia’s war on Ukraine has disrupted the global food supply, driving up prices for commodities such as grains and vegetable oils and threatening food security in some parts of the world.

    Here’s a look at the facts.

    CLAIM: Suspicious fires at food processing plants in the U.S. are being used to create food shortages.

    THE FACTS: Widely shared social media posts in recent weeks have featured lists, maps and headline montages about such fires to suggest a nefarious plot is at play — even though fire officials in many of the cases say the blazes were accidents, not the work of arsonists.

    Chatter about food processing plant fires significantly increased in April, compared with March, according to an analysis of social media, traditional media and other channels by media intelligence firm Zignal Labs on behalf of The Associated Press.

    Fox News host Tucker Carlson highlighted the theory in an April 21 segment in which his guest, radio host Jason Rantz, called the incidents “obviously suspicious,” adding that “you’ve got some people speculating that this might be an intentional way to disrupt the food supply.”

    The segment began with the news of a plane crash near a General Mills facility in Covington, Georgia. A spokesperson for the company told the AP, however, that the plant, which manufactures cereal and snacks, “did not experience any disruptions and it remains fully operational.”

    Asked for comment, Fox News pointed to a report on Carlson’s show several days later in which a reporter noted that “we have found no evidence that these incidents are either intentional or connected” but suggested incidents have been more frequent this year than in the past. It’s unclear what criteria the report used when compiling its numbers.

    The AP contacted officials in relation to 23 unique events, eight from 2021 and the rest from this year, that were referenced between two lists shared on Facebook and Twitter. Fire officials in nine instances said that the fires were determined or suspected to be accidental. In several others, officials would only say that the fires were still under investigation. In some other cases, local news reports also suggested the incidents were accidents.

    On Monday, the National Fire Protection Association pushed back on the rumors in a story in its magazine titled “Nothing to See Here.”

    Susan McKelvey, an NFPA spokesperson, noted in an email that national data show the country averaged more than 5,000 fires annually at manufacturing and processing facilities, not just food plants, between 2015 and 2019. She estimated that there have “been approximately 20 fires in U.S. food processing facilities in the first 4 months of 2022, which is not extreme at all and does not signal anything out of the ordinary.”

    “The recent inquiries around these fires appears to be a case of people suddenly paying attention to them and being surprised about how often they do occur,” McKelvey said.

    Lisa Fazio, an associate professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt University, said most Americans wouldn’t know the frequency of such industrial accidents — which “means that it’s relatively easy to create a panic over the issue.”

    With actual food shortages caused by the war, “everything they hear gets filtered through that lens and people start noticing things that they hadn’t paid attention to before,” Fazio said in an email.

    Food industry experts don’t view the accidents as a crisis for Americans, either.

    “There doesn’t appear to be any evidence connecting these fires in any way, and there is absolutely no danger to the US food supply because of a series of unrelated, unfortunate accidents,” Sam Gazdziak, a spokesperson for the American Association of Meat Processors, said in an email.

    Those who follow the food supply chain say while such fires can of course have an impact, they are not a major concern domestically or globally.

    “The fires were definitely not at the top of my list,” said Phillip Coles, a professor of practice in supply chain management at Lehigh University.

    Coles said labor shortages domestically and global issues such as the Russian war in Ukraine, lockdowns in China and shipping costs, are larger factors. He said while consumers in U.S. might not see certain items available, the issue isn’t a shortage of food altogether.

    David Ortega, a food economist and associate professor at Michigan State University, said it was “extremely unlikely” that the U.S. would experience food shortages from the Russia-Ukraine war.

    While Russia and Ukraine are major grain suppliers, the U.S. produces enough domestically and isn’t dependent on the region, Ortega said. Instead, he said, food shortages from the war would be felt in countries that depend heavily on the region for food imports, such as places in North Africa and the Middle East.

    He added: “Beliefs that the U.S. will soon be low on food are simply unfounded.” ___

    Associated Press writers Josh Kelety in Phoenix and Ali Swenson in Charlotte, North Carolina, contributed to this report.

    ___

    This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.

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  • AP FACT CHECK: NRA speakers distort gun and crime statistics

    AP FACT CHECK: NRA speakers distort gun and crime statistics

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Speakers at the National Rifle Association annual meeting assailed a Chicago gun ban that doesn’t exist, ignored security upgrades at the Texas school where children were slaughtered and roundly distorted national gun and crime statistics as they pushed back against any tightening of gun laws.

    A look at some of the claims:

    TEXAS SEN. TED CRUZ: “Gun bans do not work. Look at Chicago. If they worked, Chicago wouldn’t be the murder hellhole that it has been for far too long.”

    THE FACTS: Chicago hasn’t had a ban on handguns for over a decade. And in 2014, a federal judge overturned the city’s ban on gun shops. Big supporters of the NRA, like Cruz, may well know this, given that it was the NRA that sued Chicago over its old handgun ban and argued the case before the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled the ban unconstitutional in 2010.

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    FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: “Classroom doors should be hardened to make them lockable from the inside and closed to intruders from the outside.”

    THE FACTS: As commonsensical as that might sound, it could backfire in a horrific way, experts warn.

    A lock on the classroom door is one of the most basic and widely recommended school safety measures. But in Uvalde, it kept victims in and police out.

    Nearly 20 officers stood in a hallway outside of the classrooms school for more than 45 minutes before agents used a master key to open the classroom’s locked door.

    And Trump’s proposal doesn’t take into account what would happen if class members were trapped behind a locked door and one of the students was the aggressor in future attacks.

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    CRUZ: “The rate of gun ownership hasn’t changed.”

    THE FACTS: This is misleading. The percentage of U.S. households with at least one gun in the home hasn’t significantly changed over the past 50 years. But the number of assault-type rifles, like the one used in the Uvalde school shooting and dozens of other school shootings, has skyrocketed since legislators let a 1994 ban on such weapons expire in 2004.

    In the years leading up to and following that ban, an estimated 8.5 million AR-platform rifles were in circulation in the United States. Since the ban was lifted, the rifles — called “modern sporting rifles” by the industry — have surged in popularity. The National Shooting Sports Foundation estimated there were nearly 20 million in circulation in 2020.

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    CRUZ: “Had Uvalde gotten a grant to upgrade school security, they might have made changes that would have stopped the shooter and killed him there on the ground, before he hurt any of these innocent kids and teachers.”

    THE FACTS: This claim overlooks the fact that Uvalde had doubled its school-security budget and spent years upgrading the protections for schoolchildren. None of that stopped the gunman who killed 19 pupils and two teachers.

    Annual district budgets show the school system went from spending $204,000 in 2017 to $435,000 for this year. The district had developed a safety plan back in 2019 that included staffing the schools with four officers and four counselors. It had installed a fence and invested in a program that monitors social media for threats and purchased software to screen school visitors.

    The grant that Cruz claims would have been life-saving was from a failed 2013 bill that planned to help schools hire more armed officers and install bulletproof doors. Uvalde’s school did have an officer but the person wasn’t on the campus at the time the shooter entered the building. And, Cruz’s call for bulletproof doors might not have worked in this case, given that police were unable to breech the locked door of the classroom where the shooter murdered children and teachers.

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    EDITOR’S NOTE — A look at the veracity of claims by political figures.

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    More on the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas: https://apnews.com/hub/school-shootings

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    Find AP Fact Checks at http://apnews.com/APFactCheck

    Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

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  • FACT FOCUS: Gaping holes in the claim of 2K ballot ‘mules’

    FACT FOCUS: Gaping holes in the claim of 2K ballot ‘mules’

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    A film debuting in over 270 theaters across the United States this week uses a flawed analysis of cellphone location data and ballot drop box surveillance footage to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 presidential election nearly 18 months after it ended.

    Praised by former President Donald Trump as exposing “great election fraud,” the movie, called “2000 Mules,” paints an ominous picture suggesting Democrat-aligned ballot “mules” were supposedly paid to illegally collect and drop off ballots in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

    But that’s based on faulty assumptions, anonymous accounts and improper analysis of cellphone location data, which is not precise enough to confirm that somebody deposited a ballot into a drop box, according to experts.

    The movie was produced by conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza and uses research from the Texas-based nonprofit True the Vote, which has spent months lobbying states to use its findings to change voting laws. Neither responded to a request for comment.

    Here’s a closer look at the facts.

    CLAIM: At least 2,000 “mules” were paid to illegally collect ballots and deliver them to drop boxes in key swing states ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

    THE FACTS: True the Vote didn’t prove this. The finding is based on false assumptions about the precision of cellphone tracking data and the reasons that someone might drop off multiple ballots, according to experts.

    “Ballot harvesting” is a pejorative term for dropping off completed ballots for people besides yourself. The practice is legal in several states but largely illegal in the states True the Vote focused on, with some exceptions for family, household members and people with disabilities.

    True the Vote has said it found some 2,000 ballot harvesters by purchasing $2 million worth of anonymized cellphone geolocation data — the “pings” that track a person’s location based on app activity — in various swing counties across five states. Then, by drawing a virtual boundary around a county’s ballot drop boxes and various unnamed nonprofits, it identified cellphones that repeatedly went near both ahead of the 2020 election.

    If a cellphone went near a drop box more than 10 times and a nonprofit more than five times from Oct. 1 to Election Day, True the Vote assumed its owner was a “mule” — its name for someone engaged in an illegal ballot collection scheme in cahoots with a nonprofit.

    The group’s claims of a paid ballot harvesting scheme are supported in the film only by one unidentified whistleblower said to be from San Luis, Arizona, who said she saw people picking up what she “assumed” to be payments for ballot collection. The film contains no evidence of such payments in other states in 2020.

    Plus, experts say cellphone location data, even at its most advanced, can only reliably track a smartphone within a few meters — not close enough to know whether someone actually dropped off a ballot or just walked or drove nearby.

    “You could use cellular evidence to say this person was in that area, but to say they were at the ballot box, you’re stretching it a lot,” said Aaron Striegel, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Notre Dame. “There’s always a pretty healthy amount of uncertainty that comes with this.”

    What’s more, ballot drop boxes are often intentionally placed in busy areas, such as college campuses, libraries, government buildings and apartment complexes — increasing the likelihood that innocent citizens got caught in the group’s dragnet, Striegel said.

    Similarly, there are plenty of legitimate reasons why someone might be visiting both a nonprofit’s office and one of those busy areas. Delivery drivers, postal workers, cab drivers, poll workers and elected officials all have legitimate reasons to cross paths with numerous drop boxes or nonprofits in a given day.

    True the Vote has said it filtered out people whose “pattern of life” before the election season included frequenting nonprofit and drop box locations. But that strategy wouldn’t filter out election workers who spend more time at drop boxes during the election season, cab drivers whose daily paths don’t follow a pattern, or people whose routines recently changed.

    In some states, in an attempt to bolster its claims, True the Vote also highlighted drop box surveillance footage that showed voters depositing multiple ballots into the boxes. However, there was no way to tell whether those voters were the same people as the ones whose cellphones were anonymously tracked.

    A video of a voter dropping off a stack of ballots at a drop box is not itself proof of any wrongdoing, since most states have legal exceptions that let people drop off ballots on behalf of family members and household members.

    For example, Larry Campbell, a voter in Michigan who was not featured in the film, told The Associated Press he legally dropped off six ballots in a local drop box in 2020 — one for himself, his wife, and his four adult children. And in Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office investigated one of the surveillance videos circulated by True the Vote and said it found the man was dropping off ballots for himself and his family.

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    CLAIM: In Philadelphia alone, True the Vote identified 1,155 “mules” who illegally collected and dropped off ballots for money.

    THE FACTS: No, it didn’t. The group hasn’t offered any evidence of any sort of paid ballot harvesting scheme in Philadelphia. And True the Vote did not get surveillance footage of drop boxes in Philadelphia, so the group based this claim solely on cellphone location data, its researcher Gregg Phillips said in March in testimony to Pennsylvania state senators.

    Pennsylvania state Sen. Sharif Street, who was there for the group’s testimony in March, told the AP he was confident he was counted as several of the group’s 1,155 anonymous “mules,” even though he didn’t deposit anything into a drop box in that time period.

    Street said he based his assessment on the fact that he carries a cellphone, a watch with a cellular connection, a tablet with a cellular connection and a mobile hotspot — four devices whose locations can be tracked by private companies. He also said he typically travels with a staffer who carries two devices, bringing the total on his person to six.

    During the 2020 election season, Street said, he brought those devices on trips to nonprofit offices and drop box rallies. He also drove by one drop box up to seven or eight times a day when traveling between his two political offices.

    “I did no ballot stuffing, but over the course of time, I literally probably account for hundreds and hundreds of their unique visits, even though I’m a single actor in a single vehicle moving back and forth in my ordinary course of business,” Street said.

    City election commission spokesman Nick Custodio said the allegations matched others that had been debunked or disproven after the 2020 election.

    “The Trump campaign and others filed an unprecedented litany of cases challenging Philadelphia’s election with dubious and unsubstantiated allegations of fraud, all of which were quickly and resoundingly rejected by both state and federal courts,” Custodio said.

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    CLAIM: Some of the “mules” True the Vote identified in Georgia were also geolocated at violent antifa riots in Atlanta in the summer of 2020, showing they were violent far left actors.

    THE FACTS: Setting aside the fact that the film doesn’t prove these individuals were collecting ballots at all, it also can’t prove their political affiliations.

    The anonymized data True the Vote tracked doesn’t explain why someone might have been present at a protest demanding justice for Black deaths at the hands of police officers. The individuals who were tracked there could have been violent rioters, but they also could have been peaceful protesters, police or firefighters responding to the protests, or business owners in the area.

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    CLAIM: Alleged ballot harvesters were captured on surveillance video wearing gloves because they didn’t want to leave their fingerprints on the ballots.

    THE FACTS: This is pure speculation. It ignores far more likely reasons for glove-wearing in the fall and winter of 2020 — cold weather or COVID-19.

    True the Vote’s researcher claimed in the movie that voters in Georgia started wearing gloves to prevent their fingerprints from touching ballot envelopes after two women in Yuma, Arizona, were indicted on Dec. 23, 2020 for alleged ballot harvesting in that state’s primary election. But the Arizona indictment didn’t mention anything about fingerprints.

    Voting in Georgia’s Jan. 5, 2021, Senate runoff election occurred during some of the coldest weeks of the year in the state, and when COVID-19 was surging.

    In fact, the AP in 2020 documented multipleexamples of COVID-cautious voters wearing latex gloves and other personal protective equipment to vote.

    In a similarly speculative allegation, the film claims its supposed “mules” took photographs of ballots before they dropped them into drop boxes in order to get paid. But across the U.S., voters frequently take photos of their ballot envelopes before submitting them.

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    CLAIM: If it weren’t for this ballot collection scheme, former President Donald Trump would have had enough votes to win the 2020 election.

    THE FACTS: This alleged scheme has not been proven, nor do these researchers have any way of knowing whether any ballots that were collected contained votes for Trump or for Biden.

    There’s no evidence a massive ballot harvesting scheme dumped a large amount of votes for one candidate into drop boxes, and if there were, it would likely be caught quickly, according to Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Iowa.

    “Once you get just a few people involved, people start to reveal the scheme because it unravels pretty quickly,” he said.

    Absentee ballots are also verified by signature and tracked closely, often with an option for voters themselves to see where their ballot is at any given time. That process safeguards against anyone who tries to illegally cast extra ballots, according to Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor and the director of the Elections Research Project.

    “It seems impossible in that system for a nefarious actor to dump lots of ballots that were never requested by voters and were never issued by election officials,” Burden said.

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    This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.

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  • FACT FOCUS: Wisconsin mobile voting truck claims scrutinized

    FACT FOCUS: Wisconsin mobile voting truck claims scrutinized

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    MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Two years ago, the city of Racine became the first — and only — municipality in Wisconsin to purchase a mobile voting truck.

    City Clerk Tara McMenamin said she pushed for the truck because it was too difficult to set up equipment at remote sites for early in-person voting. The city used the truck for the first time for municipal elections this past spring. No one seemed to pay any attention.

    But with a slate of hot races on the battleground state’s Aug. 9 fall primary ballot, including GOP primaries for governor, attorney general and secretary of state, conservatives online have in recent days raised questions about the truck, asking how such an operation can be legal and accusing Democrats of using the truck to cheat.

    Here’s a closer look at some of their claims:

    CLAIM: Racine has been using multiple mobile voting vans since June 2021.

    THE FACTS: There’s only one truck, and it wasn’t used until this year. The Common Council approved funding for one truck to serve as a movable early voting site in June 2020. The city used it for the first time in the state’s spring primary this past February, McMenamin said.

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    CLAIM: The city bought the truck using “Zuckerbucks” from the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life.

    THE FACTS: It’s correct that the truck was purchased using money from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, according to Racine Mayor Cory Mason’s chief of staff, Shannon Powell. The nonprofit seeks to help election officials update technology and to increase civic participation and got a $350 million donation in 2020 from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife.

    Wisconsin’s five largest cities all received CTCL grants in 2020. Racine was one of them, accepting almost $950,000.

    Some conservatives have derided the CTCL grants as “Zuckerbucks” and called them election bribery, saying they tilted the 2020 presidential election toward Democrat Joe Biden. But judges have rejected legal challenges to the grants.

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    CLAIM: The truck has been functioning as an absentee ballot drop box in defiance of a state Supreme Court ruling in July outlawing them.

    THE FACTS: No, it hasn’t. McMenamin said the truck is used only to facilitate early in-person voting during the two weeks prior to an election as per state law. She wanted the truck because it was becoming too cumbersome for her staff to set up their equipment in remote polling sites.

    The city posts notices at City Hall, online and in the Racine Journal Times newspaper of the truck’s planned stops, meeting a requirement in state law that municipalities give public notice of the times and locations of early in-person voting sites, McMenamin said. Often the truck parks outside of buildings that have traditionally been used as early voting sites such as community centers, she said. Using the truck allows voting at the site without interrupting functions within the building, she said.

    People can walk up to the truck, register to vote if they haven’t done so, vote in one of the truck’s five built-in booths and hand their ballot to a city staff member manning the vehicle, she said. The ballots are then secured in a locked container. People can turn in absentee ballots at the truck, just as they’re allowed to do at brick-and-mortar early voting sites, but the truck doesn’t have a slit for a drop box and isn’t available 24 hours a day like a drop box, McMenamin said.

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    CLAIM: The city doesn’t allow Republican observers in the truck, enabling Democrats to cheat.

    THE FACTS: False. McMenamin said state law allows observers to watch in-person early voting, so observers are allowed in the truck. She said GOP observers have been in the truck since the fall primary early in-person voting window opened July 26th.

    “It would be exactly the same as if it was in the brick and mortar (early voting site),” she said. “(I would tell) people who are more skeptical of the process, this follows state law.”

    If election observers feel they’ve been unjustly barred or thrown out of an early voting site, they can file a complaint with the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

    Some online blogs claimed Democrats were staffing the truck and would cast “phony ballots” from it. But the truck is staffed by city election officials and has the same rules as any other early voting site.

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    This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.

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  • FACT FOCUS: Biden cancer remark causes confusion

    FACT FOCUS: Biden cancer remark causes confusion

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    President Joe Biden’s speech at a former coal-fired power plant in Massachusetts led to widespread claims on social media that he made a significant announcement not about climate change, but about his health.

    Conservative politicians and political commentators focused on a clip from Biden’s Wednesday speech, in which he told a story about growing up near Delaware oil refineries, to assert that the president announced that he has cancer.

    In response, a White House spokesperson confirmed reports that Biden was referring to previously disclosed skin cancer that was removed before he became president — not announcing a new diagnosis.

    Here are the facts.

    CLAIM: Biden announced that he has cancer.

    THE FACTS: Biden appeared at the Somerset, Massachusetts, power station to announce new steps to combat climate change, calling it “an emergency” and promising more robust action.

    At one point during his speech, he discussed the impact of environmental pollution from oil refineries near his hometown, sharing an anecdote about his childhood.

    “And guess what? The first frost, you knew what was happening. You had to put on your windshield wipers to get, literally, the oil slick off the window,” Biden said, according to a White House transcript of his remarks. “That’s why I and so damn many other people I grew up (with) have cancer and why can — for the longest time, Delaware had the highest cancer rate in the nation.”

    Right-wing accounts quickly began sharing a clip of this remark with the claim that Biden was revealing that he had cancer.

    “BREAKING: JOE BIDEN ANNOUNCES HE HAS CANCER!!,” a Republican running for Congress in Florida wrote.

    “President Biden just said he has cancer. Is it true? Or is the Commander in Chief confused? Who knows!!,” another widespread tweet stated.

    But Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson, confirmed on Twitter that Biden was referring to the publicly disclosed fact that he had skin cancer removed before he became president.

    In a November 2021 memo summarizing Biden’s health, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, Biden’s physician for more than a decade, acknowledged that Biden had “several localized, non-melanoma skin cancers removed with Mohs surgery before he started his presidency.”

    “These lesions were completely excised, with clear margins,” the report continued.

    Though Biden suggested emissions from oil refineries were responsible for his cancer, his doctor previously linked it to sun exposure.

    While discussing the cancer in his memo, O’Connor wrote that it is “well-established that President Biden did spend a good deal of time in the sun in his youth.”

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    This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.

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  • AP FACT CHECK: Lake distorts Hobbs’ education votes in Ariz.

    AP FACT CHECK: Lake distorts Hobbs’ education votes in Ariz.

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    Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is misrepresenting the voting record of her opponent, Democrat Katie Hobbs, charging in a video released this week that her work in government shows Hobbs is “Anti-American and Un-Arizonan.”

    In a 3-minute social media video, set to dramatic music and featuring patriotic visuals, Lake claims that if Hobbs is elected governor “your kindergartner wouldn’t learn the Pledge of Allegiance, but your precious 5-year-old would be taught about sex.”

    But her suggestion is built on misrepresentations of Hobbs’ votes and the content of various Arizona education bills.

    Lake’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Sarah Robinson, a spokesperson for Hobbs, said in a statement that “Kari Lake’s latest political theater is just another distraction from her own extreme positions.”

    Here’s a look at the facts.

    LAKE: “As a legislator, Hobbs actually voted to block the Pledge of Allegiance, our national anthem, our Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and even the Mayflower Compact from being taught to the next generation of Americans right here in Arizona.”

    THE FACTS: Lake is distorting Hobbs’ voting record. When Hobbs was a state senator, she voted against Senate Bill 1289, which amended an existing law listing materials that teachers and school administrators are allowed to read or post in school facilities. That list includes the Pledge of Allegiance and the national anthem, among other documents. The bill added the Arizona state motto, “Ditat Deus,” which means God enriches, to the list. It also spelled out the wording of the national motto, adding “In God we trust,” to the list. No other changes were made.

    The bill, which was approved by lawmakers and signed into law, did not affect the portion of the law that permits school staff to read or post the Pledge of Allegiance, the national anthem, or the other documents Lake identified, experts say.

    “It’s an incorrect claim. It’s a charge that’s untrue,” said Paul Bender, a law professor at Arizona State University. “She voted simply not to add to those things, ‘In God we trust’ and ‘God enriches’.”

    “The state statute already set forth the items that may be read or posted in school buildings, including the national anthem,” said Paul Bentz, Republican pollster in Phoenix. “None of those items were in question.”

    If the bill had failed to pass, the original law allowing school staff to read or post materials such as the Declaration of Independence in schools would not have changed, Barrett Marson, a Phoenix-based Republican political consultant wrote in a text message to The Associated Press.

    In a tweet on Wednesday appearing to double down on her previous accusations, Lake added another claim: that Hobbs opposed displaying American flags. As evidence, she cited Senate Bill 1289, Senate Bill 1020, and Senate Bill 1152. An AP review of these bills found no instance in which Hobbs voted against displaying the flag in schools.

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    LAKE, on what would happen in Hobbs’ Arizona: “Your precious 5-year-old would be taught about sex.”

    THE FACTS: As a state senator, Hobbs did sponsor a bill to require school districts to teach sex education in grades K-12. The bill, which didn’t pass, would have resulted in parents being required to proactively remove their child from being taught the curriculum, rather than opting in to participate.

    However, to claim that it would have led to 5-year-olds being taught about sex leaves out important context.

    The bill, introduced in the 2016 legislative session, would have mandated that the sex education program for kindergarten through 12th grade be “medically accurate, developmentally accurate and age-appropriate.” It defined age-appropriate as “topics, messages and teaching methods that are suitable to particular age and developmental levels, based on cognitive, emotional, social and experience levels of most students at that age level.”

    At the developmental stage of a 5-year-old, age-appropriate sex education largely involves learning about the concept of “good touch, bad touch” — not learning about sex as a physical act, experts say.

    “At the kindergarten level, age-appropriate sex education means things like learning the correct names of body parts, which has been found to be a protective factor against sexual abuse,” said Nora Gelperin, director of sexuality education and training at Advocates for Youth, an organization that supports comprehensive sex education. “It can also mean teaching kids that they need permission to touch someone else — the beginning of learning about personal boundaries. At this age, kids may also be taught to identify a safe person to talk to if they’re in trouble. All the lessons are in service of ensuring safety and respect.”

    Arizona is one of just five states that require parents to “opt-in” to sex ed classes, rather than having an opt-out system. State law bans sex education before 5th grade, and schools are not required to offer the courses at all. Students younger than 5th grade can only be offered instruction on HIV and sexual abuse prevention.

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    EDITOR’S NOTE — A look at the veracity of claims by political figures.

    ___

    Find AP Fact Checks at http://apnews.com/APFactCheck

    Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

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  • NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

    NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

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    A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

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    Ukrainian family killed in Russian attack, despite denials

    CLAIM: Grave markers for a Ukrainian family that say they died on March 9 in Izium prove they were not killed by Russian forces, because Russian troops did not enter the Ukrainian city until weeks later.

    THE FACTS: The Ukrainian city of Izium was being heavily bombarded by Russian forces on March 9 and the family was killed in the attack, according to people with direct knowledge of the attack on the high-rise building where the family lived, as well as reports from humanitarian groups and Ukrainian officials who documented the destruction. After Ukrainian authorities discovered a mass grave in Izium this month, social media accounts for the Russian embassy in South Africa openly questioned whether one of the families buried at the site had been truly killed in a Russian offensive on the northeastern city. On its social media accounts, the embassy shared a screenshot of a tweet by Andrii Yermak, head of the office of the president of Ukraine, featuring a photo of the Stolpakov family’s grave site. The simple wooden crosses, found in a wooded area among scores of others, mark the date of their deaths as March 9, 2022. “The Russians are killing entire Ukrainian families,” Yermak had tweeted. “Izyum. Olesya, 6 years old. Murdered by the Russian uniformed terrorists. Her parents are buried nearby.” The Russian embassy in its posts falsely claimed that the family could not have been killed by Russian troops, because they were not in the area at the time. But Russian forces did carry out several strikes on Izium on March 9, including one that destroyed a high rise on the east bank of the Severodonetsk River, according to a dozen people with direct knowledge that AP journalists have spoken to in recent days. A woman who previously lived in the building and whose mother died in the blast told the AP the Stolpakovs lived in the high rise and were among those killed. Tetiana Pryvalikhina, a 40-year-old who now lives in Kladno in the Czech Republic with her daughter, said in messages on Instagram written in Ukrainian that many of the bodies couldn’t be removed until about a month after the attack, making identification difficult. Izium’s deputy mayor Volodymyr Matsokin told the AP that about 50 people died in the attack, including the Stolpakov family. Matsokin was among those who posted numerous photos and videos of the destroyed city on social media during those weeks. Ukrainian news outlets also reported that the family died in the March 9 attack, and the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said in a Sept. 17 tweet that they died in an aerial attack on their home that day. Denis Krivosheev, a deputy director at Amnesty International, called the Russian embassy’s comment “totally disingenuous.” While it’s true that Russian forces did not establish full control of Izium until much later, they were clearly heavily shelling the city at the time the family was killed, he said. “The timing totally fits: our respondents were telling us about events at the time including on and close to 9 March,” he said in an email. George Barros, a Russia expert at the Institute for the Study of War, a D.C.-based group that’s been tracking major developments in the war, agreed. “There is ample documentation of Russian indirect fire against civilian infrastructure in Izyum since at least March 3, several days before Russian forces occupied Izyum,” he wrote in an email Monday. During a media briefing on Thursday, Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow, repeated claims that Russian forces weren’t responsible for the March 9 deaths.

    — Associated Press writers Philip Marcelo and Beatrice DuPuy in New York, Lori Hinnant in Ukraine and Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.

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    Biden’s 2021 comments on hurricane preparedness misrepresented

    CLAIM: President Joe Biden called for people in Florida to prepare for Hurricane Ian by getting vaccinated against COVID-19.

    THE FACTS: Social media users are misrepresenting an August 2021 video in which Biden urged people in hurricane-prone states to get vaccinated in case they needed to evacuate or stay in a shelter. As Hurricane Ian on Tuesday approached the southwest coast of Florida, where 2.5 million people had been ordered to evacuate, the out-of-context clip of Biden spread widely on social media. “If you’re in a state where hurricanes often strike, like Florida or the Gulf Coast or into Texas, a vital part of preparing for hurricane season is to get vaccinated now,” Biden says in the video clip. “Everything is more complicated if you’re not vaccinated and a hurricane or a natural disaster hits.” Some social media users who shared the clip suggested that Biden’s comments were in reference to Hurricane Ian’s expected landfall in Florida. “Protect yourself from incoming hurricanes by getting vaccinated… right now!” wrote a Twitter user who shared the video on Tuesday. But the video is from Aug. 10, 2021. Biden made the comments prior to a White House briefing from FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell and other officials about how the COVID-19 pandemic was impacting hurricane preparedness. But he didn’t say getting vaccinated would protect against hurricanes. In the full video, Biden discussed what he described as the upcoming “peak” hurricane season in the Atlantic region coinciding with the pandemic. “If you wind up having to evacuate, if you wind up having to stay in a shelter, you don’t want to add COVID-19 to the list of dangers that you’re going to be confronting,” Biden said in the video, later adding: “We can’t prevent hurricanes making landfall, but we can prevent people from getting seriously sick and dying from COVID-19.” Hurricane Ian made landfall in southwest Florida on Wednesday as a Category 4 storm, leaving destruction in its wake.

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    Analysts: China flight cancellations follow normal pattern

    CLAIM: There was no flight movement over China as more than 9,000 flights were canceled across the country in a single day last week.

    THE FACTS: While flight tracking estimates show that thousands of flights were canceled on several days last week, this remains consistent with the high cancellation rates the country has experienced amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and multiple experts told the AP that last week’s air patterns weren’t unusual. As baseless claims of a military coup in China spread online recently, social media users asserted that air traffic data showing more than 9,000 flights canceled across the country on a single day was proof that planes were being grounded amid turmoil in the country. “Absolutely no flight movement over China,” wrote one Twitter user on Sept. 24 while posting an image of the global flight tracking service FlightRadar24 that showed a handful of planes crossing the country. Others claimed that about 9,500 flights were canceled across China on Sept. 21, accounting for nearly 60% of flights that day. But experts say these numbers, as well as some images from flight tracking services, are being presented out of context. Ian Petchenik, director of communications for FlightRadar24, said the images appearing to capture the service’s dashboard over the weekend were likely taken during overnight hours of low flight traffic in China. He added that they also may reflect the fact that FlightRadar24’s display can only show so many flights on screen at a time, meaning if a user zooms out far enough, the number of flights in an area will seemingly disappear. Further, China’s population is not evenly distributed across the country. Because flight density varies greatly depending on the region, some areas are left looking sparse while other areas are more heavily trafficked. “If you’re not understanding what you’re looking at or you’re purposefully misrepresenting what you’re seeing, that becomes an unfortunate byproduct,” Petchenik said. FlightRadar24 data shows that just over 6,000 out of nearly 15,000 flights were canceled on Sept. 21, which Petchenik said falls in line with the high level of daily cancellations that China has recorded for more than two years. While airlines in the U.S., Europe and Australia, among others, reduced the number of scheduled flights in their flight programs amid the pandemic, many Chinese airlines opted not to remove any scheduled flights, instead canceling a large number of flights on a daily basis, Petchenik told the AP. “In no way is this surprising, concerning, suspenseful or anything,” he said. FlightRadar24 data also shows that the three Wednesdays preceding Sept. 21 all also logged more than 5,000 canceled flights. FlightAware, another major flight tracking data company, confirmed to the AP in a statement that its data listed more than 8,000 scheduled flights across China on Sept. 21, nearly 2,000 of which were canceled. Spokesperson Kathleen Bangs confirmed that the cancellations reflected normal air traffic patterns in China. “It’s not uncommon, in fact, it’s pretty much business as usual that we see very high cancellations out of China out of a number of major airports every day,” Bangs added. Cirium, an aviation analytics firm, also told the AP in a statement that Cirium found that the rate of flight cancellations in China on Sept. 21 was “very similar to other recent days.” Social media users spread the false claims of a military coup weeks before China’s ruling Communist Party is set to hold a key congress at which leader Xi Jinping is expected to be granted a third five-year term. But Xi reappeared on state television Tuesday after a several-day absence from public view. He was shown visiting a display at the Beijing Exhibition Hall, his first appearance since he returned from a regional summit in Uzbekistan last weekend. Under Chinese pandemic regulations, he would need to stay in quarantine for a week after returning.

    — Associated Press writer Sophia Tulp in New York contributed this report.

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    Video of EU flag removal in Italy is from 2013, not 2022

    CLAIM: Video shows Italians taking down the European Union flag and replacing it with Italy’s flag after a right-wing group, Brothers of Italy, won its national election.

    THE FACTS: The video, filmed on Dec. 14, 2013, in Rome, shows a member of a neo-fascist group tearing down the E.U. flag, not Italians demonstrating after the election this week. Following the victory of a party with neo-fascist roots in the country’s national election on Monday, social media users are sharing a nearly 10-year-old video to falsely claim it shows a crowd’s reaction to what is set to be Italy’s first far-right-led government since World War II. The video shows a man climbing up a ladder to a balcony to remove the E.U. flag, displayed outside the E.U. Commission office in Rome. A crowd of people chant and wave Italian flags before police break up the group. “EU Flag Ripped Down as Right-Wing Party sweeps Italian elections,” an Instagram post, which features a screenshot of the video states. But the video was filmed and uploaded to YouTube on Dec. 14, 2013. It shows a member of CasaPound, a neo-fascist group, removing the flag. CasaPound said in a statement on its website on Dec. 14, 2013, that its then-vice president, Simone Di Stefano, had been arrested for taking the E.U. flag. The group stated that Di Stefano wanted to replace the E.U. flag with the tricolor flag to protest Italian involvement in the international organization. While it’s not immediately clear who first filmed the video, dozens of local news outlets picked up the footage and reposted it that year. CasaPound also used a still frame from the same footage in its statement about the event, showing a man in a red, white and green mask and black jacket holding the blue E.U. flag from a balcony of the commission office. The group shared the video on its YouTube page, with the caption in Italian: “CasaPound blitz at European Union headquarters – flag stolen, police charges – December 14, 2013.” On Monday, Brothers of Italy won the most votes in Italy’s national election, making Giorgia Meloni the country’s first woman premier, the AP reported. Italy’s move to the far right places a eurosceptic party in a position to lead a founding member of the European Union and its third-largest economy.

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  • FACT FOCUS: Why final election results take days, not hours

    FACT FOCUS: Why final election results take days, not hours

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    As election workers spend long hours tallying ballots in Arizona and elsewhere in the days after Tuesday’s primary elections, some critics are arguing they should be finished counting by now.

    Widely shared Twitter posts this week called the delayed results “corrupt” and “unacceptable,” while Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake in a press conference on Wednesday said Arizona voters should know the winner “when they go to bed on election night.”

    She repeated that gripe during a radio interview Friday, the day after the AP declared her victory in the primary, saying “we had days of waiting to get the ballots counted. It’s a mess.”

    These complaints ignore the realities of modern-day ballot processing, which requires extensive time and labor, according to election officials and experts. In fact, states have never reported official election results on election night, experts say.

    Here’s a closer look at the facts.

    CLAIM: In the past, election results have been released on election night.

    THE FACTS: That’s misleading. While media outlets routinely project winners and The Associated Press calls races when it determines a clear victor, no state releases complete and final results on election night, nor have they ever done so in modern history, according to experts.

    “In the entirety of American history, there were never official results on election night. That is not possible, it’s never happened,” said David Becker, a former U.S. Justice Department attorney and current executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. “There is not a state in the union that doesn’t wait days, if not weeks, until after Election Day to officially certify the final results.”

    He added that when margins are large enough in certain races, media outlets feel confident enough to call races for one candidate or another. For example, Katie Hobbs was the clear winner in Arizona’s Democratic primary for governor by Tuesday night, while the state’s GOP primary for governor was still too close to call until Thursday night.

    But those projections aren’t official election results, and counting is still taking place after those calls are issued.

    There’s a reasonable argument to be made that states could strive to release unofficial election results by election night, according to Charles Stewart, a political science professor at MIT. Some states, like Florida, have passed laws that make that easier, he said.

    However, even states that do manage to report unofficial counts on election night spend the following days processing provisional ballots, reconciling unmatched signatures and correcting any tabulation errors, which leads to a delay in final results, Stewart said.

    Those unofficial counts also aren’t sufficient for the closest races, where candidates must wait for final results to identify the winner anyway, Stewart said.

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    CLAIM: If election officials take days to release a complete ballot count, that means they cheated or are incompetent.

    THE FACTS: That’s false. Time and labor is necessary to process and correctly tabulate ballots, experts and election officials say. Certain local laws also require procedures that extend the process.

    For instance, election workers in Arizona are legally barred from picking up ballots from polling places before the sites close at 7 p.m. on Election Day, said Megan Gilbertson, a spokesperson for the Maricopa County Elections Department. And as the AP has previously reported, many voters who receive mail-in ballots opt to return them on Election Day.

    In this year’s primary election in Maricopa County, which is Arizona’s largest county by far, more than 120,000 voters dropped off their ballots on Election Day, creating a backlog of votes that needed to be processed after the polls closed, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer explained on Twitter.

    Those ballots accounted for most of the votes still being counted in the days after the primary election, Richer said.

    The law also requires that mail-in ballots undergo signature verification, a time-intensive process in which the signatures on ballot envelopes are compared to voters’ on-file signatures to verify authenticity, according to Gilbertson. After the signature is verified, bipartisan two-person teams then have to physically separate the ballots from their envelopes and prepare them for tabulation.

    “We’ve had two-member teams that take your ballot out of your envelope, flatten it, they have to count every single ballot and every single envelope,” Gilbertson said. “It is a very, very manual process, but that is required by statute to have those bipartisan boards do that separation.”

    “They are making sure that eligible voters are the only ones who vote and they only vote once. And that takes time,” Becker said. “We should be thrilled that election officials all across the country take that seriously. It is much more important to get it accurate than to get it fast.”

    Arizona state law gives counties 10 days to tabulate and certify the primary election results, according to Sophia Solis, a spokesperson for the Arizona Secretary of State.

    “We don’t anticipate any delays as we expect everyone will meet their statutory deadlines,” she wrote in an email to the AP.

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    CLAIM: Maricopa County election results are particularly slow this year.

    THE FACTS: No, they aren’t. County data shows that ballot counts for primary elections took between seven and 10 days in each midterm year from 2006 to 2020. In 2020, Maricopa County took seven days to finish counting, the data shows.

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    This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.

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  • AP FACT CHECK: GOP skews budget bill’s impact on IRS, taxes

    AP FACT CHECK: GOP skews budget bill’s impact on IRS, taxes

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    Republican politicians and candidates are distorting how a major economic bill passed over the weekend by the Senate would reform the IRS and affect taxes for the middle class.

    The “ Inflation Reduction Act,” which awaits a House vote after passing in the Senate on Sunday, would increase the ranks of the IRS, but it would not create a mob of armed auditors looking to harass middle-class taxpayers, as some Republicans are claiming.

    While experts say corporate tax increases could indirectly burden people in the middle class, claims that they will face higher taxes are not supported by what is in the legislation.

    A look at some of the claims about the package that emerged from a deal negotiated by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.:

    HOUSE MINORITY LEADER KEVIN MCCARTHY, R-CALIF.: “Do you make $75,000 or less? Democrats’ new army of 87,000 IRS agents will be coming for you — with 710,000 new audits for Americans who earn less than $75k.” – tweet Tuesday.

    SEN. TED CRUZ, R-TEXAS: “The Manchin-Schumer bill will create 87,000 new IRS agents to target regular, everyday Americans.” — Friday tweet.

    THE FACTS: That’s misleading. Last year, before the bill emerged, the Treasury Department had proposed a plan to hire roughly that many IRS employees over the next decade if it got the money. The IRS will be releasing final numbers for its hiring plans in the coming months, according to a Treasury official. But those employees will not all be hired at the same time, they will not all be auditors and many will be replacing employees who are expected to quit or retire, experts and officials say.

    The IRS currently has about 80,000 employees, including clerical workers, customer service representatives, enforcement officials, and others. The agency has lost roughly 50,000 employees over the past five years due to attrition, according to the IRS. More than half of IRS employees who work in enforcement are currently eligible for retirement, said Natasha Sarin, the Treasury Department’s counselor for tax policy and implementation.

    Budget cuts, mostly demanded by Republicans, have also diminished the ranks of enforcement staff, which fell roughly 30% since 2010 despite the fact that the filing population has increased. The IRS-related money in the Inflation Reduction Act is intended to boost efforts against high-end tax evasion, Sarin said.

    Youtube video thumbnail

    The nearly $80 billion for the IRS in the bill will also pay for other improvements, such as revamping the agency’s technology, said Janet Holtzblatt, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center and former Treasury official.

    The Treasury says it will hire experienced auditors and workers who will improve taxpayer services, and that audit rates for those earning less than $400,000 are not expected to rise in relation to historic norms.

    So that’s a long way from hiring 87,000 “agents” to go after average people in the United States, as the GOP claims have it. In any case, the bill has no mandate to hire that many people.

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    REP. TROY NEHLS, R-TEXAS: “Americans asked for lower inflation and the Democrats gave us an armed IRS shadow army to spy on your bank accounts.” — Sunday tweet.

    REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE. R-Ga.: “It’s going to hire 87,000 new IRS agents and it’s going to arm — as in guns, you know, Democrats are always upset about guns — 70,000 of these IRS agents.” — at the Conservative Political Action Conference, in an interview with the conservative Canadian news magazine The Post Millennial.

    THE FACTS: That’s false. The bill will not create any such army, officials and experts say. Only some IRS employees who work on criminal investigations carry firearms as part of their work.

    A division of the IRS called criminal investigation serves as the agency’s law enforcement branch. Its agents, who work on issues such as seizing illicit crypto currency and Russian oligarchs’ assets, carry weapons, Sarin said.

    There were just more than 2,000 such special agents working at the IRS in 2021, according to agency documents. The branch will get money from the Inflation Reduction Act, but the bulk of the dollars will go toward other areas, according to Sarin.

    The bill does not designate money specifically for a large number of armed IRS employees.

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    NEVADA SENATE CANDIDATE ADAM LAXALT, criticizing his opponent, Democrat Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto: “.@CortezMasto just voted to raise taxes for Nevadans making as low as $30k/year.” — Sunday tweet.

    THE FACTS: Nothing in the bill raises taxes on people earning less than $400,000, contrary to Laxalt’s claims. There are no individual tax rate increases for anyone in the bill, experts say.

    It’s possible, though, that the bill’s new corporate taxes, including a minimum 15% tax for large corporations, could cause indirect economic impacts. A report from the Joint Committee on Taxation said some people who make less than $400,000 might see such impacts.

    “Economists are generally in agreement that the corporate income tax is borne not just by the businesses, but also by shareholders and by workers,” Holtzblatt said. “So that tax that gets imposed on the corporation, some of that might end up getting shifted to workers in the form of lower wages.”

    Added Garrett Watson, a senior policy analyst at the Tax Foundation: “Distinguishing between whether lower after-tax incomes happen because of a direct tax hike or indirect incidence may be a distinction without a difference for many households.”

    Nevertheless, supporters of the bill did not vote for tax increases on people earning $30,000, as Laxalt claimed.

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    Associated Press writer Karena Phan in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

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    EDITOR’S NOTE — A look at the veracity of claims by political figures.

    ___

    Find AP Fact Checks at http://apnews.com/APFactCheck

    Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

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  • Russian disinformation spreading in new ways despite bans

    Russian disinformation spreading in new ways despite bans

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — After Russia invaded Ukraine last February, the European Union moved to block RT and Sputnik, two of the Kremlin’s top channels for spreading propaganda and misinformation about the war.

    Nearly six months later, the number of sites pushing that same content has exploded as Russia found ways to evade the ban. They’ve rebranded their work to disguise it. They’ve shifted some propaganda duties to diplomats. And they’ve cut and pasted much of the content on new websites — ones that until now had no obvious ties to Russia.

    NewsGuard, a New York-based firm that studies and tracks online misinformation, has now identified 250 websites actively spreading Russian disinformation about the war, with dozens of new ones added in recent months.

    Claims on these sites include allegations that Ukraine’s army has staged some deadly Russian attacks to curry global support, that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is faking public appearances, or that Ukrainian refugees are committing crimes in Germany and Poland.

    Some of the sites pose as independent think tanks or news outlets. About half are English-language, while others are in French, German or Italian. Many were set up long before the war and were not obviously tied to the Russian government until they suddenly began parroting Kremlin talking points.

    “They may be establishing sleeper sites,” said NewsGuard co-CEO Gordon Crovitz. Sleeper sites are websites created for a disinformation campaign that lay largely dormant, slowly building an audience through innocuous or unrelated posts, and then switching to propaganda or disinformation at an appointed time.

    While NewsGuard’s analysis found that much of the disinformation about the war in Ukraine is coming from Russia, it did find instances of false claims with a pro-Ukrainian bent. They included claims about a hotshot fighter ace known as the Ghost of Kyiv that officials later admitted was a myth.

    YouTube, TikTok and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, all pledged to remove RT and Sputnik from their platforms within the European Union. But researchers have found that in some cases all Russia had to do to evade the ban was to post it from a different account.

    The Disinformation Situation Center, a Europe-based coalition of disinformation researchers, found that some RT video content was showing up on social media under a new brand name and logo. In the case of some video footage, the RT brand was simply removed from the video and reposted on a new YouTube channel not covered by the EU’s ban.

    More aggressive content moderation of social media could make it harder for Russia to circumvent the ban, according to Felix Kartte, a senior adviser at Reset, a U.K.-based nonprofit that has funded the Disinformation Situation Center’s work and is critical of social media’s role in democratic discourse.

    “Rather than putting effective content moderation systems in place, they are playing whack-a-mole with the Kremlin’s disinformation apparatus,” Kartte said.

    YouTube’s parent company did not immediately respond to questions seeking comment about the ban.

    In the EU, officials are trying to shore up their defenses. This spring the EU approved legislation that would require tech companies to do more to root out disinformation. Companies that fail could face big fines.

    European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova last month called disinformation “a growing problem in the EU, and we really have to take stronger measures.”

    The proliferation of sites spreading disinformation about the war in Ukraine shows that Russia had a plan in case governments or tech companies tried to restrict RT and Sputnik. That means Western leaders and tech companies will have to do more than shutter one or two websites if they hope to stop the flow of Kremlin disinformation.

    “The Russians are a lot smarter,” said NewsGuard’s other co-CEO, Steven Brill.

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  • NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

    NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

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    A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

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    IRS special agent job ad misrepresented online

    CLAIM: An online job ad shows that all new employees that the IRS intends to hire after a funding boost in the Inflation Reduction Act will be required to carry a firearm and use deadly force if necessary.

    THE FACTS: The job description does not apply to most potential new employees that the IRS will hire in the coming years, and the vast majority of IRS workers are not armed. A legitimate job ad for special agents within the small law enforcement division of the IRS that works on criminal investigations was misrepresented online following the passage this month of a $740 billion economic package that includes nearly $80 billion for the IRS. Many posts in recent days shared a screenshot that features the IRS logo and the text, “Major Duties.” The listed duties on the image include being able to “carry a firearm and be willing to use deadly force, if necessary.” Social media users claimed that the image was a job ad for thousands of new IRS employees that will be hired as a result of the bill. “The IRS is looking to fill 87,000 positions,” one Facebook user who shared the image wrote. “Requirements include working min ‘50 hours per week, which may include irregular hours, and be on-call 24/7, including holidays and weekends’ and ‘Carry a firearm and be willing to use deadly force, if necessary.’” Another Twitter user wrote: “Want to be one of the new 87,000 IRS agents? Are you willing to carry a firearm and use DEADLY FORCE? This is not at all concerning.” These social media users are falsely depicting a legitimate job ad for a special agent with IRS Criminal Investigation as a generic ad for all new positions. While that language does not currently appear on the IRS web page advertising the special agent role, a search of the Internet Archive shows that the same language can be found on the page as recently as Aug. 11. Justin Cole, a spokesperson for IRS Criminal Investigation, told the AP that the screenshots circulating online appear to show the special agent web page and confirmed that the language had been on the site but was removed. He said it was removed in error amid the spate of misinformation about IRS employees carrying weapons, but the language will be added back to the web page. Special agents with IRS Criminal Investigation, who investigate criminal tax violations and other related financial crimes, are the only IRS employees who carry firearms, according to Anny Pachner, a spokesperson for the division. Special agents compose a small sliver of the IRS workforce. There are about 2,000 special agents within the agency, which has roughly 80,000 total employees. The division dates back to 1919 and has always employed armed agents. The agency is currently hiring 300 special agents, according to the online job posting. Among the agents’ duties are executing search and arrest warrants, as well as seizures, per the posting. This is very different from the work of other IRS employees. For instance, revenue agents work on complex audits of corporations, while customer service representatives answer tax-related questions, according to the IRS. Neither roles are law enforcement positions. The claim that the IRS is going to hire 87,000 new agents in general due to the Inflation Reduction Act is also misleading, as the AP has previously reported. The figure comes from a prior Treasury Department proposal to hire roughly that many IRS employees over the next decade, but there is no explicit mandate for such a workforce in the act, officials and experts say. Many new IRS hires will replace employees who are expected to retire or quit, and not all of them will be auditors, nor will a majority of them be gun-carrying agents.

    — Associated Press writer Josh Kelety in Phoenix contributed this report.

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    Post falsely claims NYC tap water contaminated with polio

    CLAIM: Polio has been found in New York City tap water.

    THE FACTS: The virus that causes polio has been detected in New York sewage samples, not tap water. After the New York City and New York state health departments announced last week that poliovirus has been found in city sewage samples, a post claiming that polio had been found in the city’s tap water began spreading on social media. “Under Biden, they are now finding Polio in tap water,” reads the post, which received more than 112,000 likes on Instagram. It includes a screenshot of a tweet featuring a promotional video in which Mayor Eric Adams touts the city’s tap water. The tweet captions the Adams video: “Do you all remember that time when Mayor Adam’s told everyone in New York City to drink the tap water? Anyways, they found Polio in the New York City water.” But poliovirus was found in sewage samples, not tap water, and people cannot contract polio by drinking the city’s tap water, multiple city and state officials said. “New Yorkers should know that wastewater is not the same as drinking water, and it cannot be a source of infection or transmission,” Samantha Fuld, a spokesperson for the New York State Department of Health, told the AP in an email. Wastewater — used water from toilets, sinks, showers and household appliances — does not come in contact with the city’s drinking water, she said, adding there are no plans to test tap water for poliovirus. Edward Timbers, director of communications for the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, confirmed to the AP in an email that the city’s wastewater cannot end up in its tap water and that the presence of poliovirus in sewage samples does not imply that the virus is also in drinking water. “There are two separate systems in NYC,” he said. New York City drinking water is treated with purifying agents to ensure that it is safe to consume and free of pathogens, according to the city’s 2021 Drinking Water Supply and Quality Report. Polio can be spread through water contaminated with feces from an infected person, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, though it typically spreads through person-to-person contact. The state Department of Health began monitoring wastewater for signs of poliovirus through repeated sampling after a Rockland County, New York, resident developed paralysis as a result of poliovirus earlier this summer, Fuld said. According to the state agency, the CDC has confirmed the presence of poliovirus in sewage samples from New York City, Rockland County and New York’s Orange County. Dr. Kimberly Thompson, a polio expert and president of health nonprofit Kid Risk, Inc., explained that repeated samples of poliovirus found in wastewater are indicators that the virus is spreading, since it can be transmitted through an infected person’s feces. A similar false claim purporting monkeypox was found in Georgia drinking water also spread on social media this month.

    — Associated Press writer Melissa Goldin in New York contributed this report.

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    Posts misrepresent failed attempt to recall Los Angeles District Attorney

    CLAIM: Los Angeles County disqualified nearly 30% of recall ballots or ballot signatures in the attempted recall of the county’s progressive District Attorney George Gascón.

    THE FACTS: The county didn’t disqualify ballots or ballot signatures. It disqualified nearly 200,000 of about 716,000 signatures on petitions calling for a vote to recall Gascón. Los Angeles County election officials on Monday said that a proposal to recall the county’s progressive DA had failed after recall organizers did not gather enough valid petition signatures to schedule an election. Recall organizers needed to gather nearly 570,000 valid petition signatures to schedule an election, but county officials found only about 520,000 were valid after disqualifying nearly 200,000 signatures turned in. That news was misrepresented online this week when Donald Trump Jr. and others falsely claimed that the county had disqualified “ballots” or “ballot signatures.” The former president’s son made both claims, one on Twitter and one on his father’s Truth Social platform. “So in Los Angles they just disqualified almost 30% of ballot signatures BUT they expect you to believe that LESS THAN 1% of Ballots were faulty in the 2020 Presidential Election!” Trump Jr. tweeted Monday, misspelling Los Angeles. The petition signatures that the county deemed invalid were collected in the community to try to demonstrate voter support for scheduling a recall election. A Monday news release from the county said the signatures were found to be invalid for various reasons, including signers not being registered to vote, signing more than once, listing different addresses than their voter registrations, using signatures that didn’t match their voter registration signatures, and living outside the county. The recall committee said it would review rejected signatures and the verification process and “seek to ensure no voter was disenfranchised.” Joshua Spivak, an expert on recall elections and a senior fellow at the Hugh L. Carey Institute at Wagner College, said the signature rejection rate was “within the range” of past California recalls. He pointed out that most of the rejections happened not because of the signatures themselves, but because the signers were not registered voters or signed multiple times. A representative for the Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment.

    — Associated Press writer Ali Swenson in New York contributed this report. ___

    Denmark didn’t ‘ban’ COVID-19 vaccines for children

    CLAIM: Denmark has banned COVID-19 vaccines for children.

    THE FACTS: Danish residents under the age of 18 will no longer be automatically eligible for COVID-19 vaccines, but there is no overall ban for that age group, as minors who are at high risk will still be able to get the shots after a medical assessment. Social media users are misrepresenting changes to the Danish Health Authority’s fall and winter vaccine program for those under 18 as a “ban.” “Denmark coming clean that kids shouldn’t be vaccinated with a TOTAL BAN on Covid vax for kids,” a Twitter user falsely claimed. But Denmark’s guidance around COVID-19 vaccines for children is only being modified. The agency’s vaccine program states that since children and young people “very rarely become seriously ill” from the COVID-19 omicron variant, those under the age of 18 will no longer receive the first dose beginning July 1. Starting Sept. 1, youths will no longer get the second dose, although those who are at risk of developing serious illness can still get the vaccine after a medical assessment. “The Danish Health Authority does not currently plan on recommending vaccination to persons under the age of 18 as a group,” Lotte Bælum, a spokesperson for the agency, told the AP in an email. “Children and young people who are at increased risk of a serious course of covid-19 will continue to have the option of vaccination after individual assessment.” The country will begin the fall and winter COVID-19 vaccination program in October. Around 81% of Denmark’s population of 5.8 million has received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine and nearly 62% have received a booster, according to the Danish Ministry of Health. In April, the AP reported that due to Denmark’s high vaccine coverage, the country was ending broad vaccination efforts, but people over the age of 50 or older will receive invitations to receive a vaccine. The Danish Health Authority still recommends that people who are completely unvaccinated receive primary vaccination.

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