Do Viral Videos Show Poll Workers Filling Out Empty Ballots?
Workers are transcribing votes from damaged ballots onto clean ones, and they are being watched by bipartisan poll workers.
 |
Viral social media posts claim to show two videos of a poll worker in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, filling out empty ballots. Various postings of the videos have received more than 10 million views on Facebook since they were first shared on Thursday.
Both videos were captured via Delaware County’s livestream of the ballot counting process. A statement given to The Dispatch Fact Check by Delaware County’s press team said that the first video “is zoomed in to crop out the surrounding area, including the bipartisan observers who were not more than six feet away and does not give the full picture of the process.” They provided an archival photograph that shows the full scene to provide context:
The statement explains that, “Some ballots were damaged by the extractor during this process in such a way that the ballots could not be scanned successfully. According to the scanner manufacturer, Hart, the best practice to deal with damaged ballots that cannot be scanned is to transcribe the votes on each ballot to a clean ballot and scan the clean ballot. In accordance with that guidance, the Chief Clerk of the Delaware County Bureau of Elections instructed elections staff to manually transcribe the damaged ballots. As ballots were being transcribed, the original damaged ballots were directly beside the new ballots and bipartisan observers witnessed the process at close range. Damaged ballots have been preserved.”
In an interview with The Dispatch Fact Check, Adrienne Marofsky, the public relations director for Delaware County, explained that the second video is of a different poll worker engaging in “the same process” to salvage damaged ballots under the same watchful eyes of bipartisan observers.
There’s no evidence that the poll workers in the videos committed voter fraud, and the explanation presented by election officials would suggest the exact opposite was taking place as the poll workers were replicating damaged ballots to ensure all votes were counted.
If you have a claim you would like to see us fact check, please send us an email at factcheck@thedispatch.com. If you would like to suggest a correction to this piece or any other Dispatch article, please email corrections@thedispatch.com.
This fact check is available at IFCN’s 2020 U.S. Elections FactChat #Chatbot on WhatsApp. Click here for more.
| 29 | 5 |
Hey, Alec - this just showed up on my FB feed from a ‘friend’ who I now suspect is a seriously delusional QAnnon supporter.
BQQM 🎇 ELECTION FRAUD UPDATE!!!
If you have been following for a long time and you know the term "watch the waters" you probably understood it to mean the 3 gorges dam but it was never referring to that!! The "watch the water" intel refers to .....THE WATERMARK on the official election ballots!!!! The original ballots are also registered on a QFS blockchcain to prevent fraud. 12 states were targeted. The National Guard has been deployed to 12 states: Alabama, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Texas, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Washington, Virginia, Delaware, Illinois and Kentucky and they are now counting the official ballots!!!!
The DEMS fell right into the trap of this sting operation and TRUMP has it all!!! Fraud will be exposed for the world to see.
And isn't it fancy how the amazing Justice Amy was confirmed right before the election so that she can rightfully take care of the business of election fraud.... Oh and this is only the beginning of the EPIC times that lie ahead!!!
So, did Trump win by a landslide? You will soon see that he did!!!!!!!!
Man, you want poll watchers. But even with poll watchers people are skeptical. How can anyone accuse of voting fraud from a video when there are poll watchers close at hand?
Just seems like a lose-lose situation, people will see what they want to see.
Seems like everybody wants to "be in the room where it happens."