Elections 2024: The Anatomy of a Fake Report

When you see “expert reports” that claim to show evidence of election fraud, it’s a good idea to check under the hood. These claims are frequently based on unreliable data, junk science, or faulty reasoning. Often, the authors aren’t experts in the field. Upon closer inspection, the claims fall apart.

Fake reports and false claims played a part in the failed plot to overturn the 2020 election that led to the January 6 insurrection. They were often cited in court papers in an attempt to make frivolous lawsuits look credible, and they were circulated on social media to stir up doubts about election security and make election-related conspiracies seem more credible. But we know that these are not substantiated lawsuits raising real claims. Rather, they are press releases dressed up as lawsuits to get headlines. We can expect more of the same in 2024.

So how can you spot bad election data? Justin Grimmer, a professor of political science at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, recently joined States United to explain what to look out for. Dr. Grimmer is a real expert, one with decades of experience in the field of elections. He has served as an elections research expert in many legal cases, including some of the cases related to the 2020 election, and has published extensively in the field of American politics and elections.

Among the red flags that may indicate a fake report:

• The author isn’t an expert in elections, voting, or anything related, or the report lists no author at all.
• The report doesn’t say how or where its data came from.
• The report does not have a detailed methodology section that explains how the analysis was conducted.
• The report makes claims about supposedly abnormal data, but it doesn’t establish what the normal pattern should be.
• The report cites new and untested methodologies that haven’t been proven to detect fraud.