Soon after Donald Trump became the President-elect of the US, speculations regarding 20 million missing votes started circulating online. This happened after social media users began promoting two opposing narratives to suggest election fraud.
One revived Trump's false claims that the 2020 election had been stolen from him, while the other questioned how Vice President Kamala Harris could have received significantly fewer votes in 2024 than President Joe Biden in 2020. Both narratives centered around a claimed 20 million vote gap between Harris and Biden.
Social media users took to platforms like X, asking Biden for a recount amidst the speculations. A president can request a recount following election results, though this usually depends on state laws and specific conditions like the margin of victory.
To break down the narratives, President Joe Biden received around 20 million more votes in the 2020 election than Vice President Kamala Harris did in the 2024 race, leading some to claim that Trump manipulated his way to a second term or that significant fraud occurred in 2020.
However, according to AP News, these claims lack basis as votes from Tuesday’s election were still being counted. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly stated that the election infrastructure was more secure, and the election community was never better prepared to ensure a safe, secure, free, and fair election for the American people.
She noted that the election had been conducted smoothly and securely, with no evidence of malicious activity impacting election infrastructure. Biden won the 2020 Electoral College by a margin of 306 to 232, surpassing Trump in the popular vote by over 7 million ballots. Comprehensive recounts and reviews in key battleground states confirmed Biden’s win.
What did officials say regarding the missing votes claim?
Several Pennsylvania officials, including Governor Josh Shapiro, reported no evidence of cheating and affirmed the election’s security following Trump’s Tuesday post on Truth Social claiming “massive cheating in Philadelphia.”
Trump, too, was trailing his 2020 vote count by roughly 2 million, with that gap also decreasing as more ballots were processed. On November 6, 2024, VERIFY determined that over 16.2 million ballots remained uncounted across 20 states and Washington, D.C., based on the Associated Press’s estimate of the vote-count percentage.
At the time of this review, 16.7 million fewer votes had been recorded than in the final count for Biden and Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Despite these uncounted ballots, most states with a significant number of remaining votes had already been called for a candidate based on statistical analysis, indicating that the remaining ballots would not affect the Electoral College outcome.
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VERIFY mentioned that California had over 8.3 million ballots left to count, primarily from Democratic-leaning areas, but it was already projected for Harris, meaning these votes wouldn't affect the Electoral College outcome.
Similarly, Washington still had 1.5 million uncounted ballots in Democratic areas, but it had also been projected for Harris. With over 1 million ballots yet uncounted in Arizona, the final count would not impact the race's outcome, as Trump had already secured enough states for an Electoral College victory.
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