We tackled all of Trump's vote-by-mail falsehoods More than 100 times this year, President Trump has peddled false claims or imaginary threats about voting by mail. As states prepare for the Nov. 3 general election, with some expanding vote-by-mail to prevent the spread of the coronavirus at the polls, Trump is falsely accusing election officials of trying to rig the outcome. The president also has encouraged people to vote twice, which is illegal. A mountain of evidence shows that mail voting has been almost entirely free of fraud through the decades, but Trump insists that it's a recipe for disaster. For example, Trump claimed on Twitter that "mail-In Ballots will lead to massive electoral fraud and a rigged 2020 Election. Look at all of the cases and examples that are out there right now." The rate of double voting, or impersonating another voter, is so low researchers describe it as insignificant, a statistical blip. A Washington Post analysis of data collected by three vote-by-mail states found 372 possible cases of double voting or voting on behalf of deceased people out of about 14.6 million votes cast by mail in the 2016 and 2018 general elections, or 0.0025 percent. Other studies and databases show similar, vanishingly low rates. We fact-checked 23 of the most frequent or outlandish claims on mail voting from Trump and his allies, including Attorney General William Barr. All of them got Four Pinocchios. Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who'd like it! If this email was forwarded to you, sign up here. Did you hear something fact-checkable? Send it here; we'll check it out. Trump's phantom car plants Trump says that under his watch, auto assembly plants have cropped up at an unprecedented rate in Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina and possibly other states. He attributes this to his jawboning of countries such as Japan and Germany — and his threat of higher tariffs. "Many plants are being built right now — auto plants — in Michigan, just like I said," Trump said on Labor Day. "They're being built in Ohio, they're being built in South Carolina, North Carolina, they're being built all over and expanded at a level that we've never seen before." Notice how all the states are considered swing states in the presidential race or Senate battlegrounds? The Center for Automotive Research, a group that assiduously tracks this information, said there have been five new auto assembly plants announced since Trump took office, three in Michigan and the others in safe Republican states that somehow didn't make Trump's list. We gave his claim Four Pinocchios. We're always looking for fact-check suggestions. You can reach us via email, Twitter (@GlennKesslerWP, @rizzoTK, @mmkelly22, @SarahCahlan) or Facebook. Read about our process and rating scale here, and sign up for the newsletter here. You can order our book, "Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth," in paperback, e-book and audiobook via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, independent booksellers or directly from the publisher. Scroll down for this week's Pinocchio roundup. | 
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