Election fact check: Did Michael Jordan really endorse Trump? Who won NC early voting?

As Election Day continues, so does the spread of misinformation on social media sites like X, formerly known as Twitter.

Here’s misinformation circulating that reporters at The News & Observer have fact-checked, explained and debunked.

Did Michael Jordan endorse Donald Trump?

Claims that Michael Jordan endorsed former President Donald Trump have swirled on social media. The falsity appears to stem from a Sunday X post with nearly 2 million views, Reuters reported. In fact, the famed former North Carolina basketball player and owner of the Charlotte Hornets did not make an endorsement in the presidential election, a member of his family’s public relations team said on X Monday.

Are NC voting machines flipping votes?

An X account for a website known for posting false information claimed that election fraud was “confirmed” in North Carolina, alleging that a voting machine in the state was flipping votes. The post also referred to “White Hats” who it claimed quashed the problem, which is a phrase used by followers of the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon. “White hats” refers to pro-Trump government officials.

As the N&O previously reported, this claim is one of the top rumors experts expect to see in this election season, and it’s not new. Similar false claims circulated after the 2020 election, and last year, Fox News settled a defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million after the network aired false voter fraud claims, including that machines “flipped” votes.

A small number of voters have reported that their printed ballot didn’t match what they thought they selected on the voting machine, according to the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, which monitors election rumors. But experts have said that the vote-switching issues have been isolated incidents and are generally due to human error.

“There is a reason we tell people to review their ballots,” said a Georgia official on X. “Humans make mistakes. They’re called mistakes for a reason. Anyone claiming machines are flipping votes are lying or don’t research.”

Did Trump win the early vote in NC?

One X user claimed that former President Donald Trump won the early vote in North Carolina. The Monday post amassed 10,000 likes.

While it’s true that registered Republicans narrowly outnumbered Democrats in early and mail-in voting turnout — comprising 33.3% to 32.4% of the totals, respectively — the total only reflects what party voters are registered with, not who they voted for. And unaffiliated voters made up the largest share of early and mail-in voters at 33.6% of the total, The News & Observer previously reported.

A new state law prevents election workers from tabulating results from in-person early voting until after polls close on Election Day, meaning those results won’t be reported until after 7:30 p.m., The N&O previously reported. Absentee ballots can be counted before polls close, but the unofficial results won’t appear on the State Board of Elections website until Tuesday evening.

Did a Zebulon postal worker make Trump, Robinson ballots disappear?

An X user who claimed he worked at a post office in Zebulon posted a photo of what appeared to be ballots in U.S. Postal Service boxes in the back of a truck, captioning it, “For my next trick, I’m going to make all of these Donald Trump and Mark Robinson ballots disappear.” By noon on Tuesday, the post had racked up 28,000 views.

The photo isn’t new, a reverse image search shows. It’s a cropped Associated Press photo of absentee ballots in Connecticut in the 2020 election. In 2022, a different X user posted it and claimed it showed 25,000 ballots for Republican Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the now-governor of Arkansas, which he threatened to throw in the trash.

Two hours after posting the photo, the user claimed he was doing “ballot harvesting work” in Laurinburg and New Bern. The two cities are roughly a 3 hour drive from each other, and both are about 2 hours from Zebulon, where the user claimed he worked.

This story was originally published November 5, 2024 at 11:41 AM.