Posts falsely cry fraud over split-ticket voting in Arizona

President-elect Donald Trump and his opponent Kamala Harris have received different vote tallies than some down-ballot candidates in the US state of Arizona, but online claims that fraud is responsible for the discrepancies are false. Local officials and experts say the variations are due to split-ticket voting and other normal behaviors - not .

"?!? They're stealing a senate seat in AZ with corrupt Maricopa County!!!...How is it that an unknown dem senate candidate is outperformig the presidential candidates Trump and Harris in Arizona," says a November 6 post on X.

The post, which spread in the so-called "Election Integrity Community" that Trump surrogate Elon Musk up on X to crowdsource allegations of fraud, compares votes for Arizona's candidates for the US Senate, Democrat Ruben Gallego and Republican Kari Lake, with the counts for Trump and Vice President Harris in the presidential contest.

Another post claims "fraud" is the reason why Lake has received fewer votes than Trump, while a third asserts officials must have swapped the tallies for Gallego and Lake. Similar claims spread about Senate contests, including the race in the state of .

As of 0600 GMT on November 8, three days after polls closed, ballot counting was still ongoing in Arizona - including in Maricopa County, the state's largest jurisdiction. Trump was leading Harris, while Gallego was ahead of Lake, according to US media (archived here , here and here ).

But the difference in votes for Trump and Lake, as well as Gallego and Harris, is not evidence of fraud.

"Discrepancies between different races don't indicate malpractice," said JP Martin, deputy communications director for the Arizona secretary of state. "They reflect voter choice and are a normal aspect of voter behavior."

Martin told AFP in a November 8 email that voters regularly opt out of some races on their ballots while participating in others. This includes "roll-off" voting , where people vote for high-level offices but skip down-ballot races.

It is also common, especially in a swing state such as Arizona, for people to cross party lines, voting for Republican candidates in some races and Democrats in others.

"This is an example of split-ticket voting," a spokesperson for Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, told AFP in a November 8 email.

"We have seen no evidence of election fraud in Maricopa County."

Tammy Patrick , a former Maricopa County elections administrator who now serves as CEO of programs for the National Association of Elections Officials, said Arizona has a long history of bipartisan representation, with various statewide offices often held by members of different political parties (archived here ).

"There is absolutely nothing fraudulent about voters crossing party lines or opting not to vote in a given race or question," she told AFP in a November 8 email, adding that Arizona has several methods of verifying its count.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a November 6 statement that it saw "no evidence of any malicious activity that had a material impact on the security or integrity of our election infrastructure" (archived here ).