Fakes surrounding the US midterm elections: DW checked the main viral claims

The election and a wave of false claims

Democrats won a decisive victory in the US midterm elections, delivering a noticeable blow to President Donald Trump and the Republican Party. At the same time, social media were flooded with false claims of fraud: doctored screenshots of news outlets, made-up stories about illegal ballots, and accusations of vote swapping. While counting was still underway in some districts, the DW Fact check team examined several viral narratives from election day.

Video from Lewiston: helping voters, not a 'vote-stealing scheme'

The right-wing outlet The Maine Wire published on X a surveillance camera recording that garnered more than 700,000 views, claiming that a 'highly coordinated scheme to steal the election' was taking place. The video shows a man assisting voters at a polling station in Lewiston, Maine: flipping through papers, marking ballots, talking to voters; users in the thread claimed these were Somali-American voters. DW assessed the conclusion as misleading: the recording itself appears authentic, but the claim of collusion is not supported. Maine state law explicitly allows another person to assist a voter who cannot read or mark a ballot due to disability, illiteracy, or religious beliefs. The outlet called this practice 'a clear violation of state law' and reported that it had obtained the recordings through the state's Freedom of Access Act; however, Lewiston authorities, according to the outlet, refused to release the surveillance footage because ballots were visible on it, and disclosure could violate election law. Journalists at The Maine Wire had previously been accused of harassing Somali voters and filming people without permission. The video spread across Facebook and Reddit, and a Trump-appointed federal prosecutor for Maine said that his office would review the evidence regarding complaints of voter intimidation and election interference. The Maine Secretary of State's office told the outlet Maine Morning Star that it had received no credible reports of fraud by interpreters. The Justice Department sent observers to Lewiston and other jurisdictions as part of what it described as the largest election observation campaign in its history.

'FBI raid' in Houston: a made-up story built on someone else's photos

A viral post on X with more than 400,000 views claimed that the FBI had allegedly seized 'more than twenty thousand fake ballots for Democrats' from a storage unit in Houston. The Bureau refuted this to DW in writing: 'This information is false; no election-related operation took place.' The visuals themselves give away the hoax: the photo of an FBI truck comes from a different news story — it is the raid on an election warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia, earlier this year, where ballots from the 2020 election were seized; the truck reads 'FBI Atlanta.' The second image is a photo of a warehouse from the website of the company Public Storage in Houston, with no signs of a raid. The third shows ballots marked 'City and County of San Francisco Department of Elections,' which has nothing to do with Texas. The account that published the story belongs to a person who describes himself as 'a digital content creator for the pro-Trump administration TrumpNews.baby.'

Fake NBC screenshots and a concession that 'never happened'

Another viral post on X (over 700,000 views) attributed to Texas Attorney General, Republican Ken Paxton, words saying that he 'cannot accept the result as free and fair' and that a Democratic victory by James Talarico in Texas was 'fairly impossible.' The post was styled as a frame from an NBC broadcast. This is false: Paxton never said such words, and in fact the opposite happened — the Senate candidate conceded defeat. 'Let me start by congratulating James Talarico. I commit to praying for him, that he may do good for Texas and this country,' Paxton told supporters at an election night party. Talarico pulled off a sensation, becoming the first Democrat in more than 30 years, who won a US Senate seat from Texas. Other fakes used the same trick: a fake 'NBC 2026 results' graphic showing a Republican victory does not match the channel's real graphics in background colors, and a post with falsified results in which Republicans win Congress and the Senate garnered 1.7 million views. Against the backdrop of these publications, DW notes the context: Republicans more often question election results after Trump's failed attempt to contest the 2020 result, although Trump himself told The New York Times in advance that he was 'absolutely ready to accept' the outcome of the vote.