FactCheck.org's Weekly Update

President Trump used his relatively brief remarks — just 16 minutes long — during a Nov. 5 public appearance at the White House press room to make false allegations about election interference and other issues.

In remarks resembling an attack on democratic elections, rather than a presidential speech, President Donald Trump doubled down on his campaign pledge: “The only way we can lose, in my opinion, is massive fraud.”

In the two days after Election Day, Twitter has added warning labels to nine of President Trump’s election-related tweets, cautioning the messages “might be misleading.” They are misleading, and in some cases, false.

On the same day that several news organizations called the presidential race in Wisconsin for Democratic nominee Joe Biden, the campaign of President Donald Trump announced it would request a recount. How would it work?

President Trump misleadingly said early in the morning after Election Day that ballot counting in states where he was leading had been “called off,” baselessly suggesting there was something suspicious happening.

Before all of the votes in the 2020 election were counted, President Donald Trump wrongly claimed victory, calling for “all voting to stop” and claiming continuing to count legally cast votes would “disenfranchise” the people who voted for him.

Several posts on social media have made false or misleading claims alleging voter suppression and voting fraud across the United States.

We fact-check claims the candidates made in rallies and TV ads in the days before Election Day.

This is a guide to key stories we did during the 2020 election between Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden.

This week, a reader sent us a comment about our article on social media posts that misquoted former Vice President Joe Biden as saying he grew up in Section 8 housing.

A video from a right-wing activist suggests that U.S. Postal Service employees backdated ballots in Michigan. The claim is unproven, but, even if true, no ballots in the state are accepted after Nov. 3, regardless of the postmark.

A video from a livestream of the vote-counting process in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, shows election workers transcribing votes from damaged ballots so they could be scanned and recorded, according to the county. Social media users are sharing the video with the false suggestion it shows workers committing voter fraud.

The votes are still being counted and the results are unofficial, but former Vice President Joe Biden already has surpassed former President Barack Obama’s record of 69.4 million votes in 2008. But conservative personalities on social media falsely dismiss that achievement as “a damn lie.”  

Facebook users are sharing a meme that alleges a host of inaccuracies in Detroit’s voter rolls in the context of the 2020 election. But the claims stem from a 2019 lawsuit that was withdrawn after the group that filed it said the city had taken action on the issues.

An inaccurate graphic on a local TV station briefly showed one Pennsylvania county with more mail-in votes than the number of ballots it had received. The graphic was quickly corrected, but Facebook users are now sharing screenshots of it to misleadingly suggest it is evidence of voter fraud.

A bogus QAnon-related claim that many of the mail-in ballots for the Nov. 3 election were illegitimate has spread widely on social media. But the claim is based on the faulty assumption that ballots are produced by the federal government.

Viral posts on Facebook falsely claim “we have the results of the senate & house, but not the President,” suggesting it is evidence of fraud. In fact, mail-in ballots for all federal races are still being counted in some states. 

A video spread widely on social media falsely purports to show a man burning 80 ballots cast for President Donald Trump. The ballots shown in the video are sample ballots from Virginia Beach, Virginia — as evidenced by the absence of the bar code found on actual ballots — city officials said.

Viral posts on Facebook falsely claim there were more votes cast in the 2020 election in Wisconsin than there were registered voters. According to state data, the number of registered voters exceeded the votes cast by nearly 388,000, as of Nov. 1.

The falsehood that votes for President Donald Trump weren’t counted in Arizona because the ballots were filled out with Sharpie pens spread widely on the day after the election. But the county where the claim originated actually recommends that voters use fine tip Sharpies to fill out their ballots.

It’s an Election Day tradition: our awards for off-beat political ads.