https://p.dw.com/p/5P2yNPrefer DW on Google
Democrats swept to victory in a closely watched US midterm election, delivering a strong rebuke to President Donald Trump and his Republican party.
At the same time, social media was awash with false claims that the election was fraudulent, including doctored screengrabs from media outlets, invented stories of illegal ballots and accusations of vote tampering.
Even as the votes are still being counted in some races, DW Fact check took a closer look at some election day disinformation.
Interpreters can help voters — contrary to fraud claims
Claim: “A highly coordinated scheme to steal an election is happening in real time,” a right-wing media outlet claimed in a X post, viewed more than 700,000 times.
Attached was a security camera video showing a man helping voters at a polling booth in Lewiston, Maine, flipping through papers, marking ballots and speaking to them as they wrote. Other users in the thread claim they are Somali-American voters.
Verdict: Misleading
Although the footage itself appears genuine, the claim that it shows a coordinated effort to steal the election is not supported by the available evidence.
Maine’s election law says: “A voter who is unable to read or mark the ballot because of physical disability, illiteracy or religious faith may request another person … to assist the voter in reading the ballot or marking the ballot according to the voter’s wishes.”
That hasn’t stopped the right-wing account, The Maine Wire, the outlet that shared the video, from calling the practice a “blatant violation of state law.”
The same account had been posting similar videos in the run-up to the elections. The outlet stated it had requested the footage from Lewiston City Hall under the state’s own Freedom of Access Act. Authorities in Lewiston told DW Fact Check that it had denied a request for surveillance footage because ballots were visible in the recording and disclosure could violate Maine election law.
The Maine Wire reporters were accused of harassingSomali voters and recording people without permission.
The videos have been shared on Facebookand Reddit and a Trump-appointed federal attorney for Maine said his office would review evidence concerning complaints of voter intimidation and election interference.
The secretary of state’s office told the local news outlet Maine Morning Star that it hadn’t received any credible reports of interpreters committing election fraud.
The Department of Justice deployed election monitors to Lewiston and other jurisdictions ahead of the midterms as part of what it described as the largest election-monitoring effort in its history.
Fraudulent ballots not discovered by FBI in Houston
Claim: “Over twenty thousand fraudulent ballots uncovered in FBI raid of Houston storage locker warehouse all for Democrats” was the claim in a viral post on X that was viewed more than 400,000 times.
Verdict: False
The Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed that no such operation took place in a written statement to DW: “That information is false and no election-related operation occurred,” it said.
The post’s images also showed that the story was made up.
The first image, of an FBI truck at a crime scene, was taken from a different news story. A reverse image search reveals that the photo was taken during an FBI raid of the Fulton County elections warehouse in Georgia earlier this year, during which ballots from the 2020 election were confiscated. The truck has “FBI Atlanta” written on it.
The second image shows a storage facility in Houston. It was taken from the self-storage company Public Storage’s website. There were no indications that an FBI raid took place there.
And the third image is an image of ballots with the words “city and county of San Francisco Department of Elections” printed on them, showing that there is no connection to an alleged raid in Texas.
The account that posted the story belongs to a man who calls himself a “Digital Content Creator for Pro Trump Administration TrumpNews.baby”
Doctored news reports misrepresent election reactions
Claim: “I cannot accept that the result tonight was free or fair. It is simply not possible for somebody with the radical ideology of James Talarico to win an election in Texas fairly” was the wording attributed to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in an X post designed to look like a still from the broadcaster NBC, which was viewed more than 700,000 times.
Verdict: False
Paxton did not say this and this is not an authentic image of an NBC broadcast. In fact, the opposite is true: The Republican candidate for Senate conceded the race to Talarico.
“Let me start off by congratulating James Talarico. I will commit that I will be praying for him that he will do good for Texas and this nation,” Paxton said to supporters at a campaign party.
Talarico won in a stunning upset, becoming the first Democrat to win a seat in the US Senate for Texas in over 30 years.
Republicans have been more likely to cast doubts on election results since Trump’s failed attempt to challenge the outcome of the 2020 election. But Trump himself said he would acknowledge Tuesday’s results.
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
“I am absolutely willing the accept those results,” Trump told the New York Times, in the days leading up to the midterms.
That wasn’t the only social media post that used a doctored NBC graphic to spread falsehoods. Another viral X post allegedly shows the news outlets NBC’s 2026 election results with graphics and images claiming to show that Republicans won.
Though it is a convincing fake at first glance, the graphics don’t match NBC’s normal background colors or shading.
Other users shared fake vote totals, too. This post, viewed 1.7 million times, shows doctored results with a Republican victory in Congress and the Senate.
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
Alima de Graaf contributed to this report.
