Did Michigan’s Election Website Show Donald Trump Winning the State?

Nope.

By Khaya Himmelman

Nov 6, 2020

Even though it was announced on Wednesday that Joe Biden won Michigan, a viral Instagram post with a screenshot of the vote tally for Michigan, is suggesting otherwise.

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A post shared by KAYA (@kayajones)

This is false. The Michigan secretary of state’s website does not say Trump won.

On Thursday morning, the secretary of state’s office quickly clarified the matter on Twitter, explaining that “Michigan’s election system is decentralized,” and that the media gets to see real time results from “local jurisdictions.”

Fact check: because Michigan’s election system is decentralized, results are reported from local jurisdictions to counties, and only after a county has all jurisdictions reporting are its results added to our website. Media get real time results from local and county sites.
— Michigan Department of State (@MichSoS) November 5, 2020

What’s more, the screenshot included in the post clearly shows that the results listed included only 80 out of 83 counties.

Michigan’s election results have since been updated with data from all 83 counties. The results show a win for Biden with 2,790,648 votes and Trump with 2,644,528 votes.