A Bad Story from Politifact

Some time ago, Trump made the claim that “In certain swing states, there were more votes than people who voted, and in big numbers.” Politifact ran analysis of Trump’s statement, ranking it as “Pants On Fire.” Their analysis was very strange. Instead of showing proof that the numbers matched, or focusing on the lack of evidence to the contrary, the author of the post feigned ignorance of what Trump meant.

The Politifact author suggests Trump might have meant that there were more votes than the number of those registered to vote and then easily disproves this. Then he suggests Trump might have meant that some voters voted more than once and claims that a system exists to prevent this.

I find the author’s lack of understanding basic English to be very disturbing. I don’t think that’s what Trump was referring to at all. Extra votes could mean double-voting, but could also mean votes matched with made-up names or simply that there were additional ballots lying around to be counted that could not be tied to any names. Trump never gave a reason for the discrepancy; he merely claimed there was one. All he was saying is that if you add up all the people who came in person, who requested an absentee ballot, and who used a drop-off kiosk (however those are counted), the total number was less than the total number of ballots checked for Biden, Trump, Jorgenson, West, and left blank. Where did these extra ballots come from?

Trump very well may have been lying, but nobody has yet demonstrated this, certainly not Politifact.