ProPublica Already Did the Work of Monitoring Election Day and Found No Rigging

While most of the political media world spent Election Day watching its projections and everything else it thought to be true of this cycle implode, ProPublica and its network of 1,100 people who spent the day reporting on what was happening in polling locations across the country for its Electionland project. If anyone knows what happened at the polls, it would be ProPublica, with its journalist partners chasing leads all across the country, and its New York-based command center, filled with experts and students, who worked throughout the day and night to determine the veracity of social media accounts of voting issues. ProPublica did the work. And so, when Donald Trump tweeted a preposterous, baseless claim of voter fraud in the millions, enough to compensate and then some for the millions by which he is losing the popular vote, few were better equipped than ProPublica to shut down that already debunked claim. Which they did, initially in this epic tweetstorm. We had 1,100 people monitoring the vote on Election Day. We saw no evidence the election was “rigged” no matter what Stein or Trump say. /1— ProPublica (@ProPublica) November 27, 2016 Electionland had huge amounts of data. 600 ppl monitored social media. We had @LawyersComm call logs. We had 120,000 people texting us. /2— ProPublica (@ProPublica) November 27, 2016 We had 400 partner reporters across the country, including three of the largest news organizations in the U.S. /3 https://t.co/jWJYpqyHXJ— ProPublica (@ProPublica) November 27, 2016 We had voting experts in the room with us and election sources all over the country. /4— ProPublica (@ProPublica) November 27, 2016 We saw plenty of problems: Long lines, broken voting machines, incorrect poll books, confusion abt voter ID laws /5 https://t.co/IWzZgtscmV— ProPublica (@ProPublica) November 27, 2016 But we saw no reason to doubt the results. There 👏🏼 was 👏🏼 no 👏🏼 widespread 👏🏼 voter 👏🏼 fraud. /6 https://t.co/ulzmUb9onU— ProPublica (@ProPublica) November 27, 2016 We don't know what happened to 7. All claims that election machines were rigged were because of poorly calibrated machines or user error. /8 https://t.co/rY6MZQwmsJ— ProPublica (@ProPublica) November 27, 2016 A handful of people across the country were arrested for voter fraud, representing a microscopic fraction of voters. /9— ProPublica (@ProPublica) November 27, 2016 Like, um, people voting for Trump. A Texas man was arrested after trying to vote twice for Trump, for example. /10 https://t.co/m5LpJsbUO3— ProPublica (@ProPublica) November 27, 2016 But not undocumented immigrants. We saw no evidence that undocumented immigrants voted illegally. /11 https://t.co/x7FeE6IHRL— ProPublica (@ProPublica) November 27, 2016 That's a tall order conspiracy theory. Like, the biggest ever. Millions of illegal votes would require a conspiracy larger than all previous conspiracy theories combined. /12— ProPublica (@ProPublica) November 27, 2016 But full of really dumb conspiracists. Thousands of election officials would need to have taken part. And they all would have had to fail to understand the electoral college. /13— ProPublica (@ProPublica) November 27, 2016 The big sigh. There are plenty of problems with our elections that need addressing. Disproving conspiracy theories shouldn’t become one of them. 15/15— ProPublica (@ProPublica) November 27, 2016 And later, in an article titled, simply "There’s No Evidence Our Election Was Rigged," ProPublica expounded on its fact-based Twitter-thread with more facts, explaining how hard it would be to magically create this level of voter fraud without there being evidence that something was going on, long before Election Day. David Becker, a voting expert who had participated in the project told ProPublica, “There would have been an unprecedented number of new registrants that would not have had matched social security or driver’s license numbers. There was no exceptional registration, there were no crazy long lines, there were no language difficulties, and there wasn’t an exceptionally high number of mail-in ballots.” He wasn't the only one: Tammy Patrick, another Electionland expert and a fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said that no elections officials have raised flags related to tampering. Jurisdictions do regular audits to ensure that the number of sign-ins equals the number of votes being cast, and none of those audits have found problems. In fact, with the fervor raised in advance by the president-elect himself, Patrick said this election was the best monitored in her memory. Trump's claims were ridiculous and needed debunking, but they have also taken up a lot of prominent media space, in effect giving gravitas to a fiction, ensuring that many will receive it as fact, regardless of all proof to the contrary. On a similar note, thanks media publications who posted the contents of Trump's tweet in a headline as if it were a statement of fact.

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ProPublica Already Did the Work of Monitoring Election Day and Found No Rigging

While others were enthralled with the horserace, this is what ProPublica did.

Corinne Grinapol

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Corinne Grinapol