After Pennsylvania and Georgia changed from republican to democratic states for Joe Biden to win the presidential election, 290 electoral votes to 214, social media was flooded with claims of fraudulent votes.  According to viral posts, election officials provided voters with sharpies.  Voting by sharpie has no effect on the machines that count the votes, so the voter’s voice is still heard.  The county responsible for giving voters sharpies in Arizona tweeted the day of the election that the reason they chose to use sharpies was so that the ink doesn’t smudge while the ballots were being counted.  “Sharpies are the preferred device of our election equipment vendor. Black or blue pen also acceptable for proper tabulating. Bleed through is not a concern as ballots are programmed to ignore bleed” said Kent county clerk in Michigan.

As President Trump saw some red states fade to blue he came out with claims that ballots were being “magically” found or burned, without any evidence.  Trump suggested that voters that vote by mail should vote again in person; this suggestion is incorrect and politically harmful to voters.  Trump did have the lead in the beginning in a lot of states because his supporters voted in person because he had advised them to not vote by mail, but as states kept counting they saw more Biden votes coming in by mail.

Since Joe Biden was projected to win, President Donald Trump has flooded his social media with these claims of fake votes being turned in.  While Trump was going on his Twitter rampage, Twitter was attaching misinformation warnings to his tweets about the election being ‘rigged’ against him.  Biden had won Nevada with 50.2% of votes closely followed by Trump with 47.5%.  The state law in Nevada allows them to accept votes as long as they were mailed in on election day, meaning they didn’t stop officially counting votes until November 12th.  Trump supporters have been protesting outside of counting centers chanting ‘stop the steal’.  Trump has said that he has shocking information to release on Nevada and their fake votes.

Fellow Republicans criticized Trump for his doubt of the integrity of the election. Representative and air force veteran, Adam Kinzinger has repeatedly put Trump on blast for his claims of fraudulent voting, but after Trump’s speech about it, Kinzinger went to Twitter saying, “We want every vote counted, yes every legal vote (of course). But, if you have legit concerns about fraud present EVIDENCE and take it to court, STOP Spreading debunked misinformation…This is getting insane”.  A republican rep. Paul Mitchell shared a similar concern and stressed the importance of remaining faithful in the election process.  Mitchell also took to Twitter with his concerns saying, “has proof of wrongdoing, it should be presented and resolved. Anything less harms the integrity of our elections and is dangerous for our democracy, I have experienced both losses and victories in elections. Losses hurt deeply – I know that personally. But our nation demands that its political leaders accept both wins and losses with grace and maturity. Let the voters decide.”