Benford's Law proves Biden's 2020 votes were fabricated
| Benford's Law proves Biden's 2020 votes were fabricated | |
|---|---|
| FALSE | |
| "Digit patterns in vote totals violate Benford's Law and prove fabrication." | |
| Domain | Politics & Elections |
| Tactic | Pseudoscience / Junk Science Statistical & Evidentiary Distortion |
| Era | Current |
| First seen | 2020 |
| Origin | Social media posts and amateur analyses, November 2020 |
| Last reviewed | 2026-11-03 |
| Further reading: books on Politics & Elections | |
The claim that Benford's Law proves Biden's 2020 votes were fabricated applies a fraud-detection idea to data it does not suit.
What the evidence shows
- Wrong tool for precinct data. Benford's Law concerns the first digits of numbers that span several orders of magnitude. Precinct vote counts are limited by precinct size and do not follow it.
- Experts say it is inappropriate. Election-data researchers, including political scientist Walter Mebane, have written that first-digit tests on precinct counts are unreliable.
- False positives are common. Applying it would flag many clean elections as fraudulent.
Why it persists
A mathematical name gives an analysis an air of authority.
Lessons for readers
- Ask whether a statistical test was designed for the type of data being tested.
See also
Sources
- Mebane, W. R., research papers on election forensics.
- University of Maryland and other academic commentary, 2020.