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  • 2018-11-12 (xsd:date)
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  • Were Democrats Allowed to Vote Twice in Maryland's Midterm Election? (en)
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  • The 2018 U.S. midterm elections were noteworthy not only for their unprecedented campaign spending and voter turnout, but for the concerted attempts by President Trump and his supporters to delegitimize their results before the vote counts could even be completed. While the votes were still being tallied, Trump tweeted baseless accusations of election stealing in Florida and Georgia as well as electoral corruption in Arizona. When the extremely narrow margins separating the results in Florida's U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races triggered a machine recount under state law, Trump demanded a halt to the recount, claiming that the ballots were massively infected and the Republican candidates should be declared the winners. Although no major problems or irregularities were reported in Maryland (whose early voting period ran from 25 October to 1 November), Trump supporter and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones promoted the claim that Democrats were voting twice at the polls there. In a widely-shared video of a 5 November call-in session posted by Jones on his website, Infowars, a caller claimed he overheard poll workers encouraging people who had already voted to vote a second time: Despite what was claimed in Infowars' headline (Election Fraud: Democrats Are Voting Twice in Maryland), the caller made no such assertion. Kevin in West Virginia (who actually said he lives in Maryland) claimed he overheard poll workers tell voters (whose party affiliation he did not specify) that they could recast their votes. It was Jones who added, without citing evidence: And it's always Democrats, because they have no morals. Like Jones, the caller offered no evidence to substantiate his claims. Nor did we find reports or complaints of double voting or other election irregularities in local news coverage of the election. On 12 November, six days after the polls closed, Washington County Board of Elections Director Kaye Robucci told us she was unaware of election workers encouraging voters to vote twice in Hagerstown. Given all of the above, we rule Alex Jones' anecdotal report of Democrats voting twice in Maryland false. (en)
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