Fact check: No evidence of 8 million ‘excess’ Biden votes from 2020 election

August 10, 2021 2020 election

The claim: More than 8 million excess votes for Joe Biden were counted during the 2020 election

Conspiracy theorists who, months after the 2020 election, still falsely claim voter fraud affected the outcome have started to get creative.

How creative? One retired Army captain created a color-coded map that purportedly shows where there was rampant fraud during the election.

“Elections Expert Seth Keshel Releases National Fraud Numbers: Finds 8.1 Million Excess Votes in US Election, Affirms Trump Won PA, MI, WI, NV, AZ, GA and MN,” reads the headline of an Aug. 2 article from the Gateway Pundit, a conservative website that has repeatedly published false claims about voter fraud.

The article, which accumulated nearly 13,000 shares within four days, cites an Aug. 2 post from Keshel on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app popular with far-right extremists.

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The post includes a table that purportedly shows the number of “excess Biden votes” in all 50 states. Based on a “trend analysis of population growth, voter behavior and party registration,” Keshel concluded that more than 8.1 million excess votes for President Joe Biden were counted in the election.

“Trump won: PA, MI, WI, NV, AZ, GA, MN,” Keshel wrote in the post, which was viewed more than 170,000 times within five days. Former President Donald Trump shared those findings in an Aug. 3 statement.

But Trump didn’t win any of the states Keshel said he did.

Election experts say Keshel’s analysis is bogus, and other independent fact-checking organizations have debunked it. There is no evidence to support the figures in the Telegram post, nor is there evidence of any widespread voter fraud affecting the 2020 election outcome. Biden won the election with 306 electoral votes.

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“Keshel is promoting a bizarre and unfounded conspiracy about the 2020 election,” Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in an email.

USA TODAY reached out to the Gateway Pundit for comment.

Table of excess votes is ‘meaningless’

The Gateway Pundit billed Keshel as an “elections data expert” whose “investigation” came up with a conservative estimate of voter fraud in 2020. But there’s no evidence his Telegram post is based in fact.

“It’s not clear precisely what Keshel has done to create this ‘trend analysis,’” Charles Stewart, a political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in an email. “So as far as I can tell, he’s just pulling numbers out of the air.”

In a Facebook message to USA TODAY, Keshel declined to provide additional evidence to support his claims.

“If I sent everyone information, I’d get nothing done,” he said.

In its fact check debunking Keshel’s claims, the Associated Press wrote that Keshel identified himself on LinkedIn as a technology company sales manager and former baseball analyst. His profile, which USA TODAY could not find online, did not mention election experience, according to the AP.

Without seeing Keshel’s sources and methods, election experts told USA TODAY it’s impossible to verify his table.

“If I infer he’s comparing Biden’s numbers to Trump’s, and Trump’s 2020 numbers to 2016, then we need to see the full model he’s using,” Stewart said. “A rigorous statistical model would have explicit measures, reported parameters, and confidence intervals, none of which I see here.”

Modeling aside, Keshel’s claims aren’t supported by vote totals from the election. Biden won each of the states Keshel says he lost.

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That’s according to Electoral College votes certified by Congress in January. Biden flipped several states that went for Trump in 2016, including Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. The race was closer in states that tend to vote Republican, including Arizona and Georgia, but multiple recounts in those states affirmed Biden’s win. The race was not similarly close in Nevada or Minnesota.

“Keshel’s table as posted on Telegram is meaningless and therefore, meritless,” Lorraine Minnite, an associate professor at Rutgers University-Camden and author of “The Myth of Voter Fraud,” said in an email. “Without more information about his data and analytical methods, the table shows nothing.”

No evidence of widespread fraud

Desipite Keshel’s claim that there were millions of excess votes counted for Biden, there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud affecting the outcome of the 2020 election.

For there to be voter fraud on the scale that Keshel claims – 8.1 million excess votes for Biden – it stands to reason that Democrats would have performed well in other races, too. But they didn’t.

“Biden won the national popular vote by a margin that is not surprising or out of line with other recent elections,” Burden said. “Republicans did quite well in other races, making gains in the House of Representatives, governorships and state legislatures.”

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Officials from both parties at every level of government have repeatedly refuted claims of widespread voter fraud affecting the 2020 election results.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and its partners said the election was the “most secure in American history.” Former Attorney General William Barr repeatedly dismissed claims of fraud from Trump and others, saying there was no evidence to support them. Several hand recounts and audits in battleground states across the country reaffirmed Biden’s victory. And dozens of lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies to overturn the election results failed.

“There is no convincing evidence that fraud produced a substantial number of invalid votes for any candidate in 2020,” Burden said.

Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that more than 8 million excess Biden votes were counted during the 2020 election. Keshel has refused to provide evidence to support the figures in his Telegram post, and election experts who reviewed the post say its figures are baseless. Certified vote totals show Biden beat Trump in each state Keshel said he lost. There is no evidence that widespread voter fraud affected the election outcome.