A Fact-Check on Trump's Election Claims

The president has spread false claims about ranked-choice systems, voting machines, vote counting and past results to question the integrity of elections.

In his second term, President Trump has seldom let a day go by without repeating lies about election results or casting doubt on the country's voting system.

They are falsehoods that in some cases act as a prelude to actions his administration has taken to intervene in the midterm elections, like preemptively seeking to block election results in Alaska should the Republican incumbent narrowly lose or suing California over its voter rolls.

Mr. Trump has only ramped up his attacks as the midterms near and as control of Congress hangs in the balance. He has amplified conspiracy theories about how votes are cast and how they are counted in various states and baselessly declared past election results fraudulent, paving the way for him to question the integrity of the November election.

Here's a guide to some recent claims.

What Was Said

False. Alaska voters approved a ranked-choice voting system in a 2020 ballot initiative. There is no "guy sitting behind a table just picking a winner." Rather, voters rank candidates by order of preference. There is no evidence that the system benefits one party over the other.

Under a ranked-choice voting system, voters select their favorite candidate and can indicate their second and subsequent choices. If one candidate receives a majority of first-choice votes, that candidate wins outright. But if no candidate achieves a majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and the ballots of voters who ranked that candidate first are then reallocated to their next choice. The process repeats until someone receives a majority of votes.

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