A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:
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A gas leak at a Kentucky polling place fuels false claims of election fraud
CLAIM: Reports of a gas leak at a Kentucky polling place were an election-rigging tactic to gain more votes for Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear.
THE FACTS: Louisville Gas & Electric confirmed there was a legitimate report of a gas leak at a polling place at Highland Baptist Church in Jefferson County on Tuesday morning. The leak caused the polls there to close for 30 minutes, so a judge ruled that it should stay open another half-hour that evening to reach a statutorily required 12-hour voting window. Between this location and another where voting was extended, only one more voter cast a ballot after 6 p.m., according to the county clerk’s office. But social media users are questioning the incident, insinuating it was a ruse to give Beshear the votes he needed to win reelection. “Looks a lot like 100k ballots with the Governor race only filled out showed up tonight after the ‘gas leak,’” reads one post on X, formerly known as Twitter. But officials tamped down on the conspiracy theories. “This was a legitimate instance of a gas leak so any claims otherwise, we just think are patently absurd,” said Erran Huber, a spokesperson for the Jefferson County Clerk’s Office. Chris Whelan, a spokesperson for Louisville Gas & Electric, confirmed gas was detected emitting from a stove in the church, but not at hazardous levels. The stove was turned off and it dissipated. A Jefferson Circuit Court judge then extended voting at the church until 6:30 p.m., instead of the scheduled 6 p.m. deadline. The judge ordered the same extension at a polling place at an elementary school, which had also been closed for half an hour Tuesday morning, while police were pursuing a suspect, according to court documents. Huber said that only one voter came to cast a ballot between 6 and 6:30 p.m. at either of the two polling places. Despite suggestions that voters in Kentucky’s most populous county were suspiciously only casting ballots in the gubernatorial contest, state results show only around 4,000 more voters in that race than for attorney general or secretary of state. The Democratic candidates got the majority of Jefferson County’s votes in those two contests, while they fell short in other Kentucky counties.