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“HOW IS THIS STORY”
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In fact, these votes did not count for Mr. Biden.
It all started with a typo in Shiawassee, a small Michigan county, and it was discovered and corrected in 30 minutes.
The New York Times quoted Abigail Bowen, an election official in Shiawassee, as saying that “there were a few extra zeros,” but it was quickly discovered.
The screenshot of 2 electoral maps shows that there is an anomaly in the data. The first person who posted this photo later withdrew. |
Due to this error, in the Shiawassee County informal vote count report sent to Michigan officials, Mr. Biden’s total vote was 153,710, instead of the correct number of 15,371.
Fix mistakes in 20 minutes
Meanwhile, the AFP news agency interviewed the “culprit” as Caroline Wilson, a county official. He claimed to have accidentally entered zero. “It was found to be fixed, maybe in 20 minutes, so I was surprised to see that it spread so quickly,” he told AFP.
Voting Map for Vote Counting in Michigan’s Shiawassee County |
About 20 minutes after he submitted the report, a state election official called to ask if the number was entered in error, due to Shiawassee County election numbers, Bowen told The New York Time. Not that many, just 55,612 people.
County officials immediately corrected and updated the correct data.
According to Ms Bowen, these figures until then are not official and will be reviewed by a team of 2 Republicans and 2 Democrats before becoming official results.
Typographical errors, no electoral fraud
The first person to tweet misinformed election map screenshots was Matt Mackowiak, a Republican consultant in Texas.
In a later interview, Mackowiak said that after posting the photos, he saw other posts that claimed the incorrect data was caused by a typo. It deleted its original post and corrected it with the following content: “This post was shared without malicious intent. I have been told the Michigan update was a typo in one county. I deleted the original post.”
Correctional Post of Mr. Mackowiak |
“I certainly have no intention of equating a typo with fraud,” he said in the interview. I didn’t realize it could be a typo, but of course we’re all lacking sleep. “
Despite the corrections to the original poster, thousands of people continued to use the images as evidence of allegations of voter fraud.
Mackowiak said he wished Twitter could help broadcast his correction to everyone who saw the image, but social media didn’t have this option.
Mr. Mackowiak does not believe that he shared false information, because at the time it was true that the electoral map was incorrect. However, he said he saw no reason to believe the election was rigged.
The map Mr. Mackowiak selected is from Decision Desk HQ, an electoral data provider. The company said it removed the wrong votes due to typos around 5:45 a.m. (Michigan time) on April 4, which isn’t long after the addition.
Factcheck.org quoted J. Alex Halderman, a computer science and technology professor and co-chair of the Michigan Election Security Advisory Committee, as saying that incorrect entry is “a fairly common type of mistake.”
“Preliminary results are sometimes updated manually, for example by copying and pasting from a spreadsheet,” says Halderman.
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