Doug Jones Received 5,327 Votes in Town with 1,867 Registered Voters –Unproven!
Summary of eRumor:
Following Democrat Doug Jones’ upset win in an Alabama Senate special election race in December 2017, rumors spread on social media that Jones Received 5,327 votes in a town with just 1,867 registered voters.
The Truth:
There’s no evidence to support claims that Doug Jones received 5,327 votes in a town with 1,867 registered voters. The rumor implies that voter fraud fueled Jones’ upset win over Roy Moore in Alabama’s special election.
It’s not clear where the rumor came from. It appeared on social media in the days following the December 12, 2017, special election for the Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Most often, individuals posted the claim without attribution or important details.
First, the town that this voter fraud allegedly happened in isn’t named. That makes fact-checking or verifying the claim with local elections officials impossible. We scanned the most up-to-date population statistics for Alabama towns that we could find, and there weren’t any towns with exactly 2,256 residents (a population figure provided in some versions).
Second, counties list election returns by precinct, not by town. It’s unusual that the rumor claims that Doug Jones received 5,256 votes in a town with 1,867 registered voters. In order to arrive at the 5,327 vote total, you’d have had to add up vote tallies from individual precincts within a town. And, even then, it’s not clear how you could know how many registered voters there are in a given town. The State Elections Commission provides voter registration information on a county-by-county basis, not town-by-town.
In the end, there’s no way to prove or disprove the claim that Doug Jones received 2,256 votes in a town with 1,867 residents based on available information.