Fact-check: Republican National Committee mistakenly cites rising turnout as evidence of fraud

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He also joined Trump in using supposedly ridiculously weak evidence to make his case. Specifically, he argues without merit that the increase in voter turnout is a sign that something bad has happened.

RNC National Spokeswoman Elizabeth Harrington has made numerous false or misleading statements since election day baselessly alleging Democrats are trying to steal the election and Joe Biden cannot legitimately win more votes than Barack Obama. On Tuesday, his Twitter feed became particularly absurd.

Harrington posted a series of tweets in which she argued that the fact that Biden received more votes in some staunchly Democratic urban counties than Hillary Clinton did in 2016 in itself suggests fraud.

This is frankly ridiculous.

There is no evidence of widespread fraud in the country, including in the counties highlighted by Harrington. Increased voter turnout is not a sign that something shadowy has happened.

And Harrington was doing both selective selection and misuse of the data – omitting numbers that didn’t suit his case and describing others inaccurately.

1) Turnout increased nationally – in Democratic and Republican-leaning states and counties.

In other words, there was nothing unusual about Biden increasing his vote tally in particular counties in which Harrington pointedly mentioned that Biden improved Clinton’s vote tally. Because more people voted in general, for both Biden and Trump, Biden improved Clinton’s vote tally in most countries – even in counties he easily lost.

More than 152 million votes were counted in the 2020 election on Tuesday, according to the Cook Political Report. Tuesday’s incomplete figure already represented an increase of more than 15 million votes compared to 2016.

2) Biden made larger percentage gains in the major suburban counties around Milwaukee and Detroit than in the urban counties themselves.

Harrington Noted that Biden got 9.8 percent more of the vote in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin than Clinton. But it is not at all remarkable; Biden made much bigger gains in some neighboring counties. In adjacent Waukesha County, a Republican-dominated suburb west of Milwaukee that Trump won in 2016 and 2020, Biden got about 31% more votes than Clinton (as of Tuesday; all totals can change before being certified). Biden also beat Clinton’s vote total by about 31 percent in Ozaukee County, a Republican-dominated county north of Milwaukee.

In his thread, Harrington didn’t mention Biden’s performance at Waukesha or Ozaukee.

She did highlight Biden’s 13% increase over Clinton’s total votes in Democratic Wayne County, Michigan, which includes Detroit – a city that has been one of the central targets of allies’ baseless fraud accusations of Trump. She did not note, however, that Biden had improved by more than 26% on Tuesday from Clinton’s total votes in neighboring Oakland County, a northern suburban county that was both carried by Clinton and Biden but who is more politically divided than Wayne County. Likewise, Harrington omitted the fact that Biden won about 23% of Clinton’s total in Monroe County just south of Wayne County, which Trump won in both elections.

3) In the Detroit area, Trump’s vote increase between 2020 and 2016 was actually larger, in percentage terms, than Biden’s increase.

Harrington wants people to think it’s suspicious that Biden got 13% more of the vote than Clinton in Wayne County, Michigan. But Trump improved in the county even more than Biden: his total for 2020 was more than 15% higher than his 2016 total there.

Voting in New York and Illinois

This was not the end of Harrington’s dishonesty in the Twitter feed.

Trying to strengthen his argument that there was something suspicious about Biden’s performance in certain urban counties, Harrington claims that “these surges did not happen for Biden in other Dem strongholds” in which she baselessly suggested that the vote count was more fair.

She then cited some instances in which Biden allegedly got significantly fewer votes than Clinton. But those tweets were also very misleading – as she compared the 2016 final vote totals for Clinton to the 2020 subtotals for Biden.

Take Harrington Tweeter about Manhattan, New York. She posted a screenshot from The New York Times showing Clinton’s 2016 vote total at 579,013 and a screenshot from the Times showing Biden’s total at 377,605. Quoting those two numbers, she said: ” Biden LOST 201,408 votes. “

But Harrington’s own tweet shows why this calculation is invalid. In the 2020 screenshot it released, The Times noted that its Manhattan numbers at the time only represented “60% of the estimated votes reported.” In other words, thousands upon thousands of Manhattan votes had yet to be added to Biden’s total.

Harrington made the same kind of claim – “Biden LOST 104,827 votes” – about Queens, New York, which only had 63% of the estimated 2020 votes reported at the time of Harrington’s tweet.

And her too make the claim of Cook County, Illinois, where Chicago is located, claiming that “Biden LOST 228,630 votes” even though the county only had 78% of the estimated votes for 2020.

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