Fact Check: Debunking Several Claims by Diamond and Silk

Voting was never stopped, vote-counting didn’t come “to a screeching halt,” and data irregularities in unofficial vote reporting do not prove discrepancies in the actual vote.

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On Saturday, President Donald Trump and his campaign tweeted a video of Diamond and Silk—the former Fox News personalities who were fired for spreading coronavirus conspiracy theories—expounding on voter and election fraud. 

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1332847732218863616

In the video, Rochelle Richardson, or Silk, asked: “What was the legal reason for stopping the voting on election night? You know that everything all of a sudden came to a screeching halt. … And then how did everybody decide to stop all at the same time?”

There was no “stopping the voting” on Election Day. Several states paused vote counting late at night, hardly an unusual move considering the human need for sleep, but there have been no credible reports of voters being turned away at the polls before they closed. And how did everybody decide to stop all at the same time? They didn’t. Several examples from battleground states: Butler County, Pennsylvania, stopped their count at 11 p.m. because of a scanner breakdown. Fulton County, Georgia, stopped scanning absentee ballots at 10:30 p.m. Ballot counting did not stop at all in Wisconsin—where state law mandates no interruption can occur—or in Philadelphia, where officials announced they would stop issuing results at 9:30 p.m. but continued counting ballots. North Carolina stopped counting votes on Election Night for a very simple reason: They ran out of ballots to count. 

Silk also alleged that “in Pennsylvania on November 3 at 11:08 p.m., President Trump all of a sudden lost 17,877 votes. It was removed from his count, while at the same time Biden gained 17,930 votes.” Silk explained the basis for making this claim was “time stamp entries from the New York Times.” This particular claim seems to have originated on the discussion board website thedonald.win, which featured a post on November 10 titled “I FOUND EVIDENCE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA GLITCH.” The post claimed that in one vote update on the New York Times website, 54 votes were added but “the ratio changed in Biden’s favor by a whole 0.6%” effectively adding 17,930 for Biden and removing 17,877 votes for Trump. The evidence for this claim is a snippet of code taken from the New York Times’ Pennsylvania election results webpage:

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  4. Avatar photo
    Narwhal

    I don’t think debunking their claims here will have any effect on those who put any stock in their claims. But, I suppose it’s worth a shot.

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    1. deathtomcmansions

      It's more a case of readers here having knowledge so they can persuade people who only have casual acceptance of the false claims. That helps keep the falsehood from getting wider traction.

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        Narwhal

        My guess is that anyone who feels reaffirmed by those two making or endorsing claims are already too far gone to listen to reason. But, hopefully I’m wrong.

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        1. deathtomcmansions

          Oh, I agree that those who are reaffirmed are too far gone. It's kinda like the anti-vaxxer continuum. There are the activists -- those who say crap like "government injections" to refer to regular childhood vaccinations -- they're too far gone.

          But a parent who has heard a bit of antivax propaganda, and is a little suspicious of "big pharma" (even tho pharma would make far more treating vaccine preventable diseases than preventing them) might express some concerns about vaccines to a friend or acquaintance. If the friend has a decent understanding of antivaxxer propaganda and why it's false, they may have a good chance at redirecting that vaccine hesitant person away from the antivax hard core. That's who I see as being helped by fact checks -- both the conspiracy curious and their friends who reject the conspiracies etc.

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    Chris L

    "...Diamond and Silk—the former Fox News personalities who were fired for spreading coronavirus conspiracy theories...."

    I mean, you could've stopped there.

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  6. Midge

    I've run out of non-paywalled AJC articles for the month, but regarding,

    "Fulton County, Georgia, stopped scanning absentee ballots at 10:30 p.m"

    another article from AJC said,

    "There was confusion about when workers processing absentee-by-mail ballots at State Farm Arena would stop. Fulton officials said work would stop at 10:30 p.m. on Election Night.

    "Though quickly criticized by the county chairman, Barron said he sent almost all of his staff home because some were tired to the point of being 'counter-productive.' And so GOP observers left because they thought counting was done for the night. But five county workers stayed to process more ballots until 1 a.m."

    https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-news/georgia-opens-2-investigations-into-fultons-elections-operations/EVCBN4ZJTZELPDHMH63POL3RKQ/

    Were the Fulton county workers who stayed on not counting *absentee* ballots, then, but other ballots?

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    Jaliranchr

    Alex, I sincerely hope no pertinent brain cells are damaged when you have to watch "stuff" like this. Thank you for doing it so we don't have to.

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    Victor Clairmont

    Oh god not diamond and silk.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Chester

      They are true believers.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Narwhal

        Doubtful. They are shrewd and see a grift from which they can benefit. I’d be interested to see a breakdown of their close and wider social network and the criminal histories of all of them. I’m guessing ...

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        Dpatricola

        Even after being effectively blackballed from Fox News, their dedication (somehow) remains.

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