A gas leak at a Kentucky polling place fuels false claims of election fraud

CLAIM: Reports of a gas leak at a Kentucky polling place were an election-rigging tactic to gain more votes for Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. A spokesperson from Louisville Gas & Electric confirmed there was a legitimate report of a gas leak at a polling place in Jefferson County on Tuesday morning. The leak caused the polls there to close for 30 minutes. A judge extended voting at the location from 6 to 6:30 p.m. Between this location and another where voting was extended for 30 minutes, only one more voter cast a ballot after 6 p.m., according to the county clerk’s office.

THE FACTS: Social media users are questioning the incident that briefly paused voting at a polling place in Kentucky’s most populous county, insinuating that it was a ruse to give Beshear the votes he needed to win reelection.

Highland Baptist Church in Louisville was closed for half an hour on Tuesday morning after a gas leak was reported there. A judge ruled that it should stay open another 30 minutes that evening to reach a statutorily required 12-hour voting window. Online, users baselessly claimed it was suspicious.

“Looks a lot like 100k ballots with the Governor race only filled out showed up tonight after the ‘gas leak,’” reads one post on X, formerly known as Twitter, with more than 3,000 likes as of Wednesday.

Together, posts sowing doubt in the leak amassed tens of thousands of shares on the platform.

However, the gas leak was real — and the extra voting time at the church and one other location only yielded one more ballot, according to officials.

“This was a legitimate instance of a gas leak so any claims otherwise, we just think are patently absurd,” said Erran Huber, a spokesperson for the Jefferson County Clerk’s Office.

Chris Whelan, a spokesperson for Louisville Gas & Electric, confirmed there was a substantiated report of gas emitting from a stove in the church Gas was detected, but not at hazardous levels, she said. The stove was turned off and it dissipated.

A Jefferson Circuit Court judge then extended voting at the church until 6:30 p.m., instead of the scheduled 6 p.m. deadline. The judge also ordered the same extension at a polling place at an elementary school, which had also been closed for half an hour Tuesday morning because the building had to be locked down while police were pursuing a suspect, according to court documents.

Huber said that only one voter came to cast a ballot between 6 and 6:30 p.m. at either of the two polling places.

Despite suggestions that Jefferson County voters were suspiciously only casting ballots in the gubernatorial contest, state results show only around 4,000 more voters in that race than for attorney general or secretary of state. The Democratic candidates also got the majority of Jefferson County’s votes in those two contests, while they fell short in other Kentucky counties.

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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.