Fact Check: Video Does NOT Show Jimmy Carter Voting Early In Georgia — It Shows Carter And Family Gathered For His 100th Birthday
Does a video circulating on social media show Jimmy Carter, in a reclining wheelchair, waiting to cast a vote for Kamala Harris on October 15, 2024, during Georgia’s early voting ? No, that’s not true: This video was filmed on October 1, 2024, before early voting in Georgia began. It shows friends and family gathered at the Carter home in Plains, Georgia, to observe a flyover honoring the 100th birthday of the former president. The Carter Center confirmed to Lead Stories that “former U.S. President Jimmy Carter voted by mail today, Oct. 16, 2024.”
The claim about Carter was implied in the caption for a video (archived here) posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, by @EndWokeness on October 15, 2024. The video’s caption said:
BREAKING: Jimmy Carter has made it to the first day of Georgia early voting. His family declared he will vote for Harris.
This is how the post appeared at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Oct 16 14:32:37 2024 UTC)
The caption for this post does not match its video, which dated from October 1, 2023. Although it is true that former President Carter has now “made it to the first day of Georgia early voting,” which was October 15, 2024, he was not wheeled to the polls, as the video implied.
Lead Stories emailed the Carter Center, the non-profit founded by Carter and his late wife, Rosalynn, for comment and a representative of the Center replied on October 16, 2024:
The Carter Center can confirm that former U.S. President Jimmy Carter voted by mail today, Oct. 16, 2024.
The video footage from October 1, 2024, showed a gathering of friends and family for a flyover conducted over Carter’s home in Plains, Georgia, on his 100th birthday, but the 15-second-long clip posted on X does not show the flyover.
CBS Evening News posted an 18-second-long segment with footage of the same gathering on YouTube on October 1, 2024. The Lead Stories composite image below displays screenshots from the 0:11 and 0:14 marks that show the flyover and Carter looking up toward the sky as attendees took pictures of the flyover.
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with YouTube screenshots taken on Wed Oct 16 17:47:00 2024 UTC)
An October 2, 2024, article in Stars and Stripes, the U.S. military news outlet, also reported on the flyover. Carter graduated from the Naval Academy in 1946 and served as a naval officer until 1953.
At the time this fact check was written, Logically Facts had reviewed the same claim.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks addressing false claims about Jimmy Carter can be found here.
