Fact Check: Video Does NOT Show Line For Early Voting In Michigan — It Was Campaign Rally Line
Does a social media video show a line of thousands of early voters in Grand Rapids, Michigan? No, that’s not true: The video shows Michigan residents waiting in line to see Vice President Kamala Harris speak at a campaign rally. Early voting in Michigan started a day after this video was posted.
The claim about the video appeared in a post on X (archived here), formerly known as Twitter, on October 18, 2024. The caption read:
Early voting underway in Grand Rapids, Michigan today. As Kamala says, #WeAreNotGoingBack #VoteBlueDownBallot #HarrisWalz2024 !! ⚖️💙🇺🇸🌊👍
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Oct 28 13:37:38 2024 UTC)
The video accompanying the post shows a minute and 33 seconds of footage of a line of people outdoors. The post offers no evidence that the people are waiting to vote in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
The TikTok username “@maryb_theturtle” can be seen on-screen. That account (archived here), however, does not display the video. It did have multiple videos of people attending an event where Harris and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer spoke (archived here and here, respectively). All these videos were posted on October 18, 2024.
The White House website had a transcript of Harris’ remarks (archived here) at an October 18, 2024, event in Riverside Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Using Google Maps (archived here) to search for this location, Lead Stories found the bridge seen in the video posted on X. The address is Riverside Park Dr., NW, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Exploring the scene further revealed the same landscape, sidewalk and roadway.
(Source: X and Google Maps screenshots taken on Mon Oct 28 18:19:15 2024 UTC)
A reverse image search on Google Lens for a still from the footage that shows the line of people led to this October 18, 2024, story on MLive, a Michigan news site, about the Harris rally in Grand Rapids. A C-SPAN recording of Harris speaking at the rally at Grand Rapids’ Riverside Park can be found here.
According to Michigan’s Department of State (archived here), which oversees election administration, October 19, 2024, is the earliest voting for the 2024 election can start. That’s the day after the video was posted on X.
The “Early in-person voting” page on the Department of State’s website elaborated:
Early voting for the November Elections begins for most jurisdictions Saturday, October 26th excluding Detroit, Canton Township and East Lansing. Detroit will begin early voting Saturday, October 19th. Canton Township and East Lansing will begin early voting starting Monday, October 21st.
Lead Stories contacted the Michigan Secretary of State about the claim on X and will update this article when we receive a relevant response.
At the time this was written, Reuters and USA Today had reviewed the same claim.
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims surrounding the 2024 U.S. presidential election are here.
