Over the past week, America has been faced with a difficult choice. The people have to decide whether to vote for former vice president Joe Biden or President Donald Trump to become the new, or renewed, president. Over all of the chaos and arguments, one thing in particular stands out: fraud. 

Many Americans are claiming that Biden or Trump is cheating.  Here are some of the false accusations that have been spreading all over the media within the past week. 

Postal Votes: Without evidence, the Trump campaign has often claimed that increased postal voting, because of the pandemic, will lead to fraud. Last week, President Trump suggested 50,000 people in Ohio getting incorrect absentee ballots was evidence of a “rigged election”. 

Trump has used this example multiple times, but the director of the FBI says there is no evidence of widespread fraud. The elections board in Franklin County, Ohio admitted to the error. It was found within a technology malfunction. A high-speed scanner stopped working. This caused more than 250,000 absentee ballots, for those not voting in person in their state, sent out were inaccurate. 

But, in response to Trump, they said, “Our board is bipartisan and our elections are fair. And every vote will be counted.”

“Dumped Ballots:” In September, pictures of ballot envelopes in California were shared thousands of times on Facebook along with other unsubstantiated claims of “vote rigging”. The official County of Sonoma Facebook page addressed these claims by saying, “The pictures are of old empty envelopes from the November 2018 election that were disposed of as allowed by law.”

Further evidence that proved that the photos were misleading was that the county’s ballots for this year’s presidential election had not yet been sent out to voters when the pictures were first shared. Many national and state-level studies have also proved that voter fraud is extremely rare in the United States. 

Conspiracy Theories: Another tweet has gone viral showing false information. This tweet has lead to many false conspiracy theories building off of the information about the capture and death of Osama Bin Laden. An article reporting these baseless claims entered the mainstream media after President Trump retweeted it. 

The article discussed a “whistleblower” that claims to have information to prove that a “body double” of Osama Bin Laden was killed by American troops in Pakistan, rather than the real Al Qaeda leader. This false article also went on to accuse Joe Biden of attempting to cover-up and the shooting down of a US helicopter in Afghanistan in 2011, but they failed to provide evidence to support their claims. 

A member of the elite Navy Seal unit who took part in the mission was enraged about this and said it was, “trampling on the graves of some of the best heroes I have ever personally worked with”.

The author later posted that he had no evidence to support his claims. 

During such an important election it is necessary that the people of America are well educated in what choice they make. With the media spreading false accusations, it is very critical to become well educated on the topic you or others are discussing. Finding out whether the claims are true or not before reposting can save you along with others from being falsely informed.