Fact check: Typo led to false post about Michigan votes showing up 'magically' for Biden
Corrections & clarifications: This story has been updated to reflect the source of the voting data error, a clerical error in Shiawassee County, Michigan, that caused an incorrect vote tally to be reported in government data.
The claim: 100K votes in Michigan were 'magically' added to Biden's vote tally during the night.
After weeks of warnings of potential voting fraud, the sudden purported overnight surge of more than 100,000 votes in Michigan — all for Vice President Joe Biden — sent social media into overdrive.
The allegation was picked up by conservative social media posters, widely shared and eventually retweeted by President Donald Trump.
The social media claims were accompanied with screenshots of vote tallies showing an addition of 138,339 votes for Biden, but none for anyone else. The screenshots showed no time stamp nor indicated who had posted the vote tallies.
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So where did this come from?
The memes were based on an apparent typo by a county in Michigan in reporting local voting data.
There is no evidence of voter fraud, particularly since the error was quickly corrected on the county election site.
How the claim spread
The claim of some nefarious vote spurt was quickly picked up by various conservative media, such as this post by Sean Davis, co-founder of the Federalist.
"So while everyone was asleep and after everyone went home, Democrats in Michigan magically found a trove of 138,339 votes, and all 138,339 of those 'votes' magically went to Biden? that doesn't look suspicious at all"
The post did not explain the source of the original data, leaving it unclear whether it was information posted by Michigan election officials or some other group.
Not long after it was posted, Twitter tagged it as containing disputed information.
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At the same time, conservative columnist and podcaster Matt Mackowiak posted the sharply climbing vote count, with this comment: "An update gives Biden 100% of new votes — 128+"
Mackowiak's post was picked up and retweeted by Matt Walsh, a conservative writer, blogger and speaker who writes for The Daily Wire. He added this intro: "This is reason enough to go to court. No honest person can look at this and say it's normal and unconcerning."
As the post soared across social media, Walsh's tweet was, in turn, retweeted at midmorning by Trump, who posted it with a headline is all caps: "WHAT IS THIS ALL ABOUT?"
Going full circle, Mackowiak — after realizing the error — deleted his original tweet, which then disappeared from Walsh's post and from Trump's.
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A typo, and a correction
Mackowiak said his original tweet was "honestly" posted and shared, adding, "I have now learned the MI update referenced was typo in one county. I have deleted the original tweet."
Davis' retweet of the error — which had briefly appeared on national news site — was tagged by Twitter, prompting him to say, "Precisely 0% of this tweet is 'disputed.' All I did was compare two different sets of numbers on NYT's website. That's called arithmetic, and it's not up for debate. Twitter is a cancer, and Big Tech is trying to steal the election for Democrats."
Davis tells USA TODAY, "I was right, the numbers had no basis in reality, and everyone who had a meltdown over me accurately pointing out the suspicious data should learn to do math."
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So where did the error begin? Several data hounds spotted the error in media compilations of state data.
The clerical error occurred in Shiawassee County and was quickly quickly caught, the New York Times reported. "All it was is there was an extra zero that got typed in," Abby Bowen, the election clerk, told the Times, according to reporter Jack Nicas. Bowen told the Times that a state official noted the error, contacted the county in about 20 minutes and the typo was fixed.
Among those who spotted the error quickly was Ian Goldstein, who says he participates in political betting and prediction markets and uses the name @ENGOLD. He says he saw the error on the media site DecisionDeskHQ, which had received the information from Shiawassee County. The county had erroneously plugged in the number 153,710 for Biden instead of the accurate 15,371. As a result, Biden's total quickly ballooned not only in the county tally, but also in the statewide tally.
"I noticed the errors myself in trying to follow the vote count on multiple sites and resolve disparities," he tells USA TODAY.
DecisionDeskHQ later tweeted: "This morning there was a clerical error in the Shiawassee, MI county presidential data. Once we identified the error, we cleared the erroneous data and updated it with the correct data as provided by officials. We stand by our data as reflected."
Goldstein posted the errors online to point out the mistaken data, tagging some news sites that had picked it up. It was these posts, pointing out the error, that apparently emerged online as evidence of purported voter fraud.
Among others on social media who spotted the error and quickly sent up an alert was Jonathon Grant. He tells USA TODAY that he is a Canadian and was placing some wagers on the election using Twitter to get most up to date information.
Our ruling: False
The sudden increase in a vote for Biden stemmed from an error by a local county.that quickly corrected the typo. a We rate the claim that these votes "magically" showed up, and was somehow fraud, as FALSE, based on our research.
Our fact-check sources:
Tweet, Nov. 4, from @aldnox
Decision Desk HQ election results
Tweet, Nov. 4, from @mattmackowiak
Tweet, Nov. 4, from @seandavis
Tweet, Nov. 4, from DecisionDeskHQ
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Typo led to false post about Michigan votes for Biden