New Hampshire Democratic primary targeted by false fraud claims

"SOURCE: Rep. Dean Phillips received almost twice as many votes as Biden did in the New Hampshire primary. The Democrat Party, in an effort not to embarrass the president, 'found' 50,000+ write in votes for Biden to give him the 'win'," says a January 24, 2024 post on X, formerly Twitter.

Similar claims spread on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Some social media users questioned sudden jumps in the results or how quickly US media called the race for Biden, who was not on the ballot.

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Screenshot of a post on X taken January 29, 2024

 

Biden cruised to victory in New Hampshire's Democratic primary January 23, and former president Donald Trump defeated challenger Nikki Haley in the Republican contest. Biden's win came via a write-in campaign supporters launched after a scheduling dispute between the Democratic Party and state officials rendered the vote symbolic.

Claims of malfeasance affecting those results echo allegations of fraud in the 2020 and 2022 election cycles -- and they are similarly baseless.

"This is shameful and absolutely untrue," Dean Phillips, a Democrat challenging Biden for the presidential nomination, said January 24 on X (archived here).

"The State of New Hampshire manages its elections with great integrity and efficiency, and Joe Biden won the NH Democratic primary election last evening fair and square."

Anna Sventek, communications director for New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan, confirmed the results in a January 25 email. With 99 percent of ballots counted, Biden had gathered nearly 80,000 votes by January 29 -- far more than any other candidate (archived here).

"I am confident the vote tally was handled accurately and that there was never any malfeasance. No ballots were suddenly found," Scott Spradling, a New Hampshire-based political analyst, told AFP on January 26.

The 'write-in factor'

Biden's supporters mounted a write-in campaign after Democratic Party leadership scrapped New Hampshire's role in hosting the nation's first primary, instead placing South Carolina at the front of the line.

New Hampshire moved forward with its poll anyway, prompting the Democratic National Committee to refuse to seat the state's delegates at its summer nominating convention.

To support their claims of fraud, some of the social media posts point to live results from news outlets such as NPR that show fewer votes for Biden than challengers Phillips and Marianne Williamson.

But the screenshots only show partial results -- and the highest portion of votes are labeled "unprocessed write-in," many of which later went to Biden.

"Unprocessed write-ins are write-in votes that have not been added to any candidate's total yet," said Jacob Neiheisel, an associate professor of political science at the University at Buffalo, on January 26. 

"In many states, the machine that is reading the ballot will pick up that there is a write-in, but in order for a candidate to be assigned to that write-in, the ballot has to be examined further."

Spradling offered a similar explanation.

"Election officials in every town have to go through each ballot, hand by hand, and look at each name written in the write-in category," he said. "As the count moved to formally recognize each write-in vote, the number of unprocessed write-in ballots decreased, and the number of votes for Joe Biden increased. That is simply a tabulation."

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Timeline of key events leading to the US presidential election on November 5, 2024 (AFP / Jonathan WALTER, Anibal MAIZ CACERES, Gal ROMA)

The Associated Press (AP), a US news agency that compiles vote returns and shares them with other news organizations -- including NPR -- called the race for Biden shortly after polls closed (archived here and here).

An AP spokesperson referred AFP to an explainer that says the agency made the call "based on an analysis of initial vote returns where write-in votes have been tabulated by candidate" (archived here).

"The early returns confirm the findings of AP's VoteCast survey of likely Democratic primary voters, which found an overwhelming majority of write-in voters supporting the incumbent president," the article says. "Together, they show that Biden has an insurmountable lead over the rest of the Democratic field."

The news agency had previously reported how the Biden "write-in factor" would make the Democratic race more complex (archived here).

Other US media saw the New Hampshire results as a sign of strength for Biden, despite polls showing him neck and neck or even behind Trump.

AFP has debunked other misinformation about the New Hampshire primary here and here.