Baseless claims of election irregularities swirl, but Trump still has not won Arizona

An image shared on Facebook that shows Donald Trump pointing at something carries this caption: "Oh, look, I won Arizona."

One user, who uses a Trump photo as a profile picture, posted the image and added: "BY A LOT!"

The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

Trump came close, but he lost to Joe Biden by just over 10,000 votes in the 2020 presidential race in the Grand Canyon State, as the official result from the Arizona Secretary of State shows: 

Biden: 1,672,143 votes, 49.36%
Trump: 1,661,686 votes, 49.06%

Judges rejected lawsuits on behalf of Republicans seeking to halt certification of the vote or alleging wrongdoing in Maricopa County.  The county conducted a hand count audit of a sample of ballots as required by state law and hired independent firms to conduct a forensic audit of tabulation equipment. The county found no abnormalities. 

But Republicans in the Arizona Senate hired a team including Cyber Ninjas, which has no prior experience auditing elections, to audit the Maricopa County results. The company’s head, Doug Logan, was part of the "stop the steal" conspiracy theories about the election that culminated in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. 

Election experts, both Democrats and Republicans, have questioned the legality of the partisan-led ballot review and say it lacks transparency. They’re concerned that it could feed a new wave of misinformation about the election.

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Several false claims arising from the audit have already been made and debunked.

• Trump said "74,243 mail-in ballots were counted with 'no clear record of them being sent.'" Our rating: False. The claim was based on confusion over the early voting process and a misuse of Maricopa County documents. 

• Trump said: "The entire Database of Maricopa County in Arizona has been DELETED!" Our rating: False. His claim was made after a tweet from the audit stated that the county "deleted a directory full of election databases." Three days after Trump’s claim, the head of a firm helping with the audit essentially walked back the database claim.

• Trump stated: "Republican state senators" who started an audit of 2020 election results in Maricopa County are "exposing this fraud." Our rating: False. The audit is ongoing and no official findings have been released.

• A post shared on Facebook claimed: "A quarter of a million illegal votes found in Arizona’s audit." Our rating: False. The claim was based on speculation by a former adviser to Trump, not any audit finding..

Separate from the audit, the Associated Press reported July 16 that statewide, county election officials have identified fewer than 200 cases of potential voter fraud out of more than 3 million ballots cast.

Finally, there is this:

Findings of the audit will not affect the election outcome, because the results were already certified by state officials and accepted by Congress.

We rate the post False.