Trump’s claim of ‘massive cheating’ in Philadelphia rejected by officials

WASHINGTON — US election officials have been responding to claims spreading online questioning the integrity of the vote, including one from Donald Trump alleging “massive cheating”.

They have rejected some accusations of voting malpractice as well as clarifying some legitimate problems which have been taken out of context.

BBC Verify has been tracking and investigating the most widely shared claims.

1) Trump claim of ‘massive cheating’

Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social saying “law enforcement coming” to Philadelphia because of “massive cheating” there.

He did not provide details of the alleged cheating or any evidence.

Truth Social Trump post on Truth Social claiming there is “massive cheating” Truth Social

The Philadelphia Police Department told BBC Verify that they were not aware of what Trump was referring to.

Philadelphia’s District Attorney Larry Krasner, who is a Democrat, posted on X saying: “There is no factual basis whatsoever within law enforcement to support this wild allegation.”

Seth Bluestein, the Republican City Commissioner in Philadelphia, also posted on X saying: “There is absolutely no truth to this allegation. It is yet another example of disinformation. Voting in Philadelphia has been safe and secure.“

2) Viral claim about ballot markings

An image on social media showed a person holding a mail-in ballot paper which they claimed already had a mark next to Kamala Harris’s name.

The person who posted it on X claimed that voting for anyone else would render the ballot void.

One post, viewed more than 3 million times, said the picture showed “weird ballot shenanigans happening”.

BBC Verify spoke to the Kentucky Board of Elections which rejected the allegation.

It said it had mailed out 130,000 ballots and had not been made aware of any complaints about mail-in ballots having pre-printed marks in any candidate selection boxes.

“As no one has presented a pre-marked ballot to election administrators or law enforcement, the claim that at least one ballot may have had a pre-printed mark in Kentucky, currently only exists in the vacuum of social media,” it said.

The election board added that for mail-in ballots in Kentucky if more than one candidate choice was marked in ink, then the ballot would still be counted if the voter circled their preferred choice.

3) Claim about absentee ballots for the military

A post on X which claimed “the Pentagon reportedly failed to send absentee ballots to active military service members before the election” has been viewed over 28 million times.

It referenced a letter to Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin, written by three Republican members of congress, expressing “grave concern” over “deficiencies” in procedures for overseas military personnel to vote.

However the letter did not accuse the Pentagon of failing to send them absentee ballots.

It is not the Pentagon’s job to do this – military personnel can vote abroad through the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) and ballots are sent to them by election officials where they are registered in the US.

If the ballot is in danger of not arriving before the voting deadline, personnel can vote via what is called a Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot (FWAB).

The letter claimed an unspecified number of “service members” had requested a FWAB but were told their base had run out. However, it is possible to download and sign one through the FVAP website.

We asked the Department of Defense for details about how many people had been affected, but it would not comment. It did say that it had trained 3,000 Voting Assistance Officers to support personnel with voting.

4) Claim about power outages and voting

Multiple posts on X suggested that power outages reported in Pennsylvania on Tuesday were linked to election interference.

Some of these posts focused on outages in Northampton County in particular.

One post, which has a quarter of a million views, claimed “they are shutting down the power in Pennsylvania” alongside a power outage map of the county.

According to a power outage tracking website, Northampton County is served by two electricity providers: FirstEnergy and PPL Electric Utilities.

Todd Meyers, spokesperson for FirstEnergy, told BBC Verify that eight polling locations in the county had been affected by outages, which were caused by an electrical fault.

“All polling locations had their power restored within 10 minutes and all had battery backup for voting machines and voters were not impacted”, Mr Meyers said.

BBC Verify also contacted PPL Electric Utilities for comment.

5) Claim about voting machine in Kentucky

A video which appears to show someone repeatedly trying and failing to vote for Donald Trump on a voting machine in Laurel County, Kentucky – before a vote appears next to Kamala Harris’s name – went viral.

The person posting it said: “I hit Trump’s name 10 times and it wouldn’t work I then began recording and you can see what happened…. Switched it to Harris.”

Another post, viewed nearly seven million times, featured the video with the claim: “Voting machines in Kentucky are literally changing the vote from Donald Trump to Kamala Harris. This is election interference!”

Election officials confirmed the video was authentic and the machine did malfunction, but said it was an isolated incident and the voter was able to cast their ballot as intended.

“After several minutes of attempting to recreate the scenario, it did occur. This was accomplished by hitting some area in between the boxes. After that we tried for several minutes to do it again and could not,” the county clerk said in a statement.

The machine in question was taken out of action until it was inspected, and later in the day the county clerk posted a video on Facebook showing the machine working correctly.

“In an election on this scale there are always going to be some problems,” said Joseph Greaney, a voting expert at US election website Ballotpedia.

“It can be one or two machines but people are extrapolating those out into a bigger problems, but I would say with a good degree of confidence that they are isolated incidents and they are caught,” he added. — BBC