Twitter’s “fact-check” of a tweet from President Trump about mail-in voting contained an error that had to be corrected by election officials.
“There was an error in Twitter’s fact check of Trump’s vote-by-mail tweets, underscoring the challenge social media platforms face trying to arbitrate truth,” Wall Street Journal reporter Dustin Volz wrote on Twitter. “It was corrected after an elections professional notified the company (and me) about the mistake.”
There was an error in Twitter’s fact check of Trump’s vote-by-mail tweets, underscoring the challenge social media platforms face trying to arbitrate truth.
It was corrected after an elections professional notified the company (and me) about the mistake.https://t.co/bQmfZc8pBm pic.twitter.com/6IoeSzlXpq
— Dustin Volz (@dnvolz) May 27, 2020
The fact-check’s statement that “mail-in ballots are already used in some states, including Oregon, Utah and Nebraska” conflated absentee ballots and mail-in ballots in at least one state, according to Volz’s reporting in the Wall Street Journal.
“While all states allow absentee voting via the mail, only a handful of states including Oregon and Utah automatically send registered voters mail-in ballots. Nebraska, in contrast, recently mailed applications to every voter — in response to the pandemic, and the state didn’t automatically send ballots,” the article states.
The mistake, as the article points out, “raised questions” about the role Twitter will play going forward, serving as an independent fact-checker.
Twitter updated the language, removing the reference to Nebraska and replacing it with “five states already vote entirely by mail and all states offer some form of mail-in absentee voting.”
Twitter issued their first-ever fact-check of a tweet after Trump tweeted his concerns about the integrity of mail-in ballots.
“There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent,” Trump tweeted earlier this week. “Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one. That will be followed up with professionals telling all of these people, many of whom have never even thought of voting before, how, and for whom, to vote. This will be a Rigged Election. No way!”
The link is now marked with an exclamation point that leads to news articles “fact-checking” Trump’s claim along with a summary at the top calling the president’s comment “unsubstantiated.”
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany pushed back against Twitter’s fact-check Thursday, arguing there is voter fraud and that mail-in voting is specifically a problem in California like the president said.
