Thread by @ariehkovler

Let's talk about this screenshot which Trump claims shows fraud, and explain why it's nonsense. 1/

So, Trump and the Trumpist media points to these screenshots. On the first one, Trump has 2,200,902 votes and Biden has 1,992,356. In the second shot, Biden has shot up to 2,130,695 but Trump and all the other candidates stay the same. Suspicious, no? 2/

Well, no. It's not. First, this is NOT an official map from the State of Michigan's electoral board. It's made by a media outlet, @DecisionDeskHQ. You can see it here: results.decisiondeskhq.com

Now, @DecisionDeskHQ has been really efficient at getting county election data from all around the country and entering it into their map, providing ongoing coverage of the election totals, and calling races.

They also kept an ongoing count of the vote in Michigan on Twitter. You can see it here. Notice that both candidates totals change each update as you'd expect.

https://twitter.com/DecisionDeskHQ/status/1323944370098311172

So what's with the map? Well, maybe the screenshot is faked. But most likely, someone at @DecisionDeskHQ was updating the totals by hand and just did Biden first (or last).

And so the screenshots were maybe taken just a few seconds apart, and if they'd have been done a few seconds earlier they'd have shown a big jump in Trump's vote instead.

In any case, @DecisionDeskHQ is just one good media site among many. The jump in only Biden's total was not in the actual votes reported out of Michigan.

Trump just saw this screenshot being passed around his fans on Twitter and jumped on it. We can be smarter than that. /END

OK, an update here from a helpful Twitter user:

The screenshots are reversed. Biden's total DROPPED from 2,130,695 to 1,992,356 because @DecisionDeskHQ found a typo (an extra zero) in county-level data.

Last night, @ENGOLD noticed that @DecisionDeskHQ had 153,710 votes for Biden in Shiawassee County instead of 15371. That got Biden to the 2,130,695.

When the mistake was removed, 2,130,695 - 153,710 + 15,371 = 1,992,356

So the whole thing is a fake. Biden's total *dropped*, and someone reversed the images to claim Biden had mysteriously gained votes. Then it got to Trump who used this forgery to claim to the American people and the world that the election is fixed.

The person who shared this image when it got picked up by conservative commentators (and Trump) has explained he didn't know it was fake and has now removed it. This is a good thing and fwiw I believe him. .

https://twitter.com/MattMackowiak/status/1324041161321992192