Donald Trump Alleges More Than 1.1M American Votes Were 'Created out of Thin Air' and Social …

President Donald Trump‘s latest false claim of election fraud in Pennsylvania has Americans sounding off once again on social media. Trump retweeted a graphic late on Friday night, appearing to show a discrepancy between the number of mail-in ballot requests and the number of mail-in votes cast. As it turned out, the graphic mixed up various numbers from the primary election and the general 2020 presidential election.

The information in Trump’s tweet has been thoroughly disproven, as explained in a report by fact-checking site Snopes. It explained that the 1.8 million ballots were reported requested by registered Democrats, and did not include the requests from registered Republicans or unaffiliated voters. Furthermore, the numbers were from Oct. 19, over a week before the deadline for requesting mail-in ballots. In the end, over 3 million ballots were requested in total, and just over 2.6 million were returned in time to be counted in the election.

The fact-checking did nothing to dissuade Trump or his die-hard supporters on social media, however. Many continued to perpetuate conspiracy theories about mass voter fraud and partisan election tampering with no supporting evidence whatsoever.

This new post comes shortly after a Pennsylvania judge threw out the Trump campaign’s appeal against the state’s election results. According to a report by CBS News, Judge Stephanos Bibas wrote: “Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”

The falsehood of Trump’s tweet only made critics more outraged by its brazenness. Here is a look at the response on social media on Saturday morning.

Fact-Check

Many journalists, watchdog groups and other public officials shared the simple explanation for the discrepancy Trump was presenting: he was comparing the number of mail-in ballot requests from different elections. However, even when multiple sources informed Trump that the information was wrong, he did nothing to correct himself or delete the tweet.

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Banned

Many users want to see Trump banned from Twitter to stop him from spreading misinformation about the election. They fear that his posts will do long-term damage to democracy itself since they shake his followers’ faith in the process, even if they have no tangible impact on this particular election.

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Evidence

Many commenters wondered why Trump was sharing this information online and not in court if it was as authentic as he claims. Some even commented that his work in appointing judges should have made these cases easy for him to take on if he had real evidence.

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Possibilities

For some users, Trump’s latest claim of election fraud boiled down to two possibilities: either he was lying or the Pennsylvania election officials were. Based on Trump’s track record as president, they felt comfortable assuming that it was the former, not the latter.

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History

Many Americans marveled at Trump’s rhetoric, asking if he understood how these kinds of claims would look in the long-term context of his presidency. Others guessed that he did not think about those kinds of things.

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Repetition

Finally, many commenters were simply shocked at Trump’s insistence on his election fraud claims, going on weeks now with no real evidence. Some feared that this was a part of a strategy to exhaust his detractors until it becomes hard to discern who is right anymore, as fact-checkers grow tired of correcting the same things over and over again.

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