Check election claims against records and procedure

Election claims are unusually easy to misread because the same word can refer to different procedures. A recount checks vote totals again. A post-election audit tests selected records or equipment under a defined method. A lawsuit records allegations and evidence submitted by parties, but an allegation in a filing is not a judicial finding. Certification is the formal process that turns local and state results into an official outcome.

The fastest way to evaluate an election story is to identify the jurisdiction before evaluating the conclusion. Election rules, ballot handling, audit procedures and public-record systems vary by state and county. A claim about “the machines” is too broad until it identifies the specific equipment, software version, location, date and record that would show the alleged problem. A statistical pattern can justify checking, but it cannot identify illegal votes without a link to actual ballots or voter records.

Use primary evidence whenever the dispute is procedural: certified canvass reports, hand-count records, audit reports, court orders, chain-of-custody documents and official investigation files. Then compare the primary record with at least one independent account that explains the procedure. For historical 2020 claims, the archive below preserves the old URLs but updates them with later evidence, including hand audits and official investigations that did not exist when many headlines first circulated.