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Claim: New Jersey election officials threw out nearly 20 percent of mail-in ballots. Fact check: True

Paterson, NJ

The May municipal elections in Paterson, N.J., have been plagued with allegations of election fraud.

A tweet on June 28 by President Trump cited voter fraud in a New Jersey election in order to bolster his argument against mail-in voting. Trump claimed that nearly 20 percent of ballots in a special election for city council representatives were fraudulent.

The municipal election was held in May in Paterson, N.J., for several city council seats. It was among a handful of elections that Gov. Phil Murphy ordered be completed exclusively by mail-in voting due to the coronavirus pandemic. To make the process easier, Murphy signed an executive order in March for ballots to be sent to all registered voters without the need for an application.

But claims of fraud began appearing in local media as early as election day.

According to a report by NPR, the fraud investigation began after the U.S. Postal Inspection Service informed local law enforcement that hundreds of mail-in ballots were stuffed inside a Paterson mailbox.


More than 1,200 ballets were initially tossed due to issues with voter signatures and another 1,000 were dumped because the person who dropped off the ballots did not correctly fill out the envelope to indicate they were the "bearer" of the ballots. New Jersey law allows a "bearer" to collect and deliver up to three ballots per election; however, this right does not extend to candidates.

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Three months after the election, four men were charged by state Attorney General Gurbir Grewal with illegally collecting or possessing ballots, including two winning city council candidates. The nonprofit Paterson Press found that votes had been cast in the names of three deceased individuals. And another resident listed as having voted said she did not receive a vote-by-mail ballot, according to NBC New York.

In total, election officials admitted that more than 3,000 mail-in ballots, about 19 percent of those submitted, were disqualified.

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election observer in Nevada

An election observer watches ballots being counted in North Las Vegas, Nevada, on Thursday.

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Claim: Election observers have not been allowed to do their jobs. Fact check: False

In the early morning hours on Friday, President Trump tweeted, "The OBSERVERS were not allowed, in any way, shape, or form, to do their job and therefore, votes accepted during this period must be determined to be ILLEGAL VOTES." The president did so as the vote margin in Pennsylvania and Georgia continued to close and even put former Vice President Joe Biden ahead in both states.

State rules vary on who is permitted to monitor the polls. However, across the board most states permit partisan monitors as long as they follow guidelines. On Wednesday, the Trump campaign filed lawsuits in Nevada, Michigan and Pennsylvania to give observers greater access to viewing the ballot counting process. With no evidence of wrongdoing in Michigan and the ballot counting process largely finished, a lower court dismissed the lawsuit there.

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California ballot processing

California's safeguards against voter fraud include signature matching.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

Claim: California sent 440,000 ballots to people who died or moved. Fact check: Mixed

California election officials sent ballots to all active registered voters for the November election. But in a press release distributed Monday, Election Integrity Project California, a self-described nonpartisan watchdog organization, criticized 440,000 "questionable" mailed ballots.

The organization sent a letter to the California secretary of state, writing that 416,633 Californians who were registered to vote on or before Nov. 4, 2008, have not voted or updated their registrations since that date. Because of this, EIPCa wrote, those voters "likely moved or died." Voters in California are marked as "inactive" if they move within the state and do not re-register to vote. However, there is no law in the state that eliminates voters from the active list because they have not voted.

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Lauren Boebert

Colorado congressional candidate Lauren Boebert ties the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact to water issues in a misleading campaign video.

Jason Connolly/Getty Images

Fact check: Colorado Democrats are going to 'steal' electoral votes. Fact check: False

On Monday Lauren Boebert, a Republican running for Congress in Colorado's 3rd district, tweeted a campaign video and introduced it by saying, "Stop Democrats from stealing our votes for President and putting Colorado's water at risk." President Trump retweeted it on the same day. She was referring to a bill signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis in 2019 that added Colorado to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which would give a state's electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, but only goes into effect if enough states join to guarantee at least 270 electoral votes would be awarded.

The compact is aimed at avoiding the scenario in which the winner of the national popular vote does not also win the Electoral College vote, which most recently happened in 2000 and 2016. However, this legislation won't go into effect this election because only 16 states with a collective 196 electoral votes have signed on. There is also a ballot measure to repeal the law on the November ballot. In the video, Boebert said the law was "giving Colorado's votes to California," insinuating that because of California's size it would hold more influence in the election. However, the Electoral College system already incentivizes campaigns to prioritize certain states, like Florida and Pennsylvania, that have larger populations and swing voters. In the 2020 general election campaign events featuring the candidates have not been held in 37 states, Colorado included.

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