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No, undocumented immigrants were not caught voting in Alabama Senate election
Democrats used another dirty trick in an attempt to defeat Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore by having undocumented immigrants vote. At least that’s what an article circulating on Facebook claims.
"Update: van full of illegals caught voting at multiple Alabama polling locations," states a headline on nofakenews.online Dec. 12.
Moore lost to Democrat Doug Jones in a special election to replace Jeff Sessions on Dec. 12. The Washington Post reported in November that Moore, while in his 30s, initiated sexual encounters with several teenagers, according to the women interviewed by the newspaper.
Facebook users flagged the nofakenews.online post as being potentially fabricated, as part of the social network’s efforts to combat misinformation. The article is deliberately false and comes from a website that claims to be satire.
The article states that law enforcement stopped a vehicle containing 13 Hispanic men who had voted at Santa Recto Middle School. (We found no such actual school in Alabama.)
The same men were spotted at multiple cities in Alabama and the State Election Integrity Board arrested 10 of them. All of the men but one were undocumented immigrants, the article says.
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"Investigators determined that the men were responsible for 'dozens of fake votes' around the state and officials are working to invalidate those votes as we speak," states the article.
However, there is no State Election Integrity Board in Alabama, John C. Bennett, a spokesman for the Alabama Secretary of State told PolitiFact.
"That does not exist, nor does anyone in the elections’ office have any arrest authority at all so that is super not true," Bennett said.
The Secretary of State received no complaints through its online complaint reporting system alleging that undocumented immigrants had voted, Bennett said.
While an Alabama election integrity board is fiction, something similar does exist on a national level: President Donald Trump formed the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity which aims to look for noncitizens on voter rolls. There have been some instances of noncitizens voting in some states, but actual evidence has shown small numbers among millions of votes cast nationwide.
Nofakenews.com is affiliated with another fake news website America’s Last Line of Defense, among the biggest sources of fake news online. The author of these fake news websites is Christopher Blair who previously told PolitiFact that he designed his parody site to fool conservatives with fake stories most people would find absurd. However, we’re not sure given the misleading claims of Trump and others of widespread voter fraud that this would meet any reasonable definition of satire. The post appears to have been removed as we began fact-checking its accuracy.
We rate this claim Pants on Fire.
Our Sources
Nofakenews.online, "Update: van full of illegals caught voting at multiple Alabama polling locations," Dec. 12, 2017
Alabama Secretary of State, Stop Voter Fraud Now, Accessed Dec. 12, 2017
Washington Post, "Moore supporters wield anonymous threats, mysterious texts, falsehoods," Nov. 15, 2017
Hoax-alert, "Fake News: Van Full Of Illegals NOT Caught Voting At Multiple Alabama Polling Locations," Dec. 12, 2017
White House, "Presidential Executive Order on the Establishment of Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity," May 11, 2017
PolitiFact, "PolitiFact's guide to fake news websites and what they peddle," April 20, 2017
PolitiFact, "Trump's commission vice chair Kris Kobach says immigration data not bounced against voter rolls," May 23, 2017
PolitiFact, "If you're fooled by fake news, this man probably wrote it," May 31, 2017
Interview, John C. Bennett, Alabama Secretary of State Deputy Chief of Staff/ Director of Communications, Dec. 13, 2017
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No, undocumented immigrants were not caught voting in Alabama Senate election
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