187-year-old Voter or Born in 1983 – Disinformation Spread by Alt-Info

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Speaking about the U.S. presidential elections during the Alt-Info TV program “Alt Interview” on January 30, the TV channel’s founder, Konstantine Morgoshia claimed that “dead voters” elected Joe Biden as the new U.S. President.  He said that according to some reports, “century-old” people cast their ballots for Biden in the elections.

Konstantine Morgoshia: “If elections were rigged here [in Georgia], then imagine what happened with Biden? The man was actually elected by dead voters… A certain chief of Ocho-Pinchu tribe voted for him, century-old people were casting their ballots, an absolutely comic situation. Even we did not take liberties to act this way… I remember that a 187-year-old man cast a vote [for Biden], if I am not wrong, it happened in Illinois…”

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Konstantine Morgoshia’s claim as if dead voters cast ballots in the U.S. presidential elections and the elections were rigged in favor of Joe Biden lacks evidence. The information as if a 187-year-old citizen cast a ballot in the elections is false. In 2009, a voter born in 1823 was really found in the Michigan electoral database. However, after checking the information, it appeared that it happened due to a typographical error and in fact, the person was born in 1983. The error was eliminated in June 2020, prior to the presidential elections.

  • Information as if a 187-year-old voter cast a ballot in the U.S. presidential elections is false.

The information that a 187-year-old voter cast a ballot in the U.S. presidential elections cannot be searched through open sources. The identical information went viral on November 4, 2020, according to which a 177-year-old voter born in 1823 was put on Detroit’s voter list. PolitFact fact-checked the information and found that the voter “born” in 1823 was in fact born in 1983 and registered in 2008, so the matter was a typographical error. It is noteworthy that the error was eliminated in the electoral database several months before the presidential elections. Therefore, it is a false claim that a person born in 1823 cast a ballot on November 3, 2020.

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The Public Interest Legal Foundation found 2,503 dead people registered, including “one voter born in 1823” in the Detroit electoral database in 2019 and filed a lawsuit in the federal court in December of the same year. On June 29, 2020, the foundation dropped their lawsuit after they concluded that Detroit elections officials had taken action to fix the voter rolls. Thus, the information as if dead voters cast ballots in the November presidential elections is false.

Other fake news about the U.S. elections

The fact-checking organizations have verified a number of fake news about the U.S. elections that we offer below:

  • There is no evidence that 14,500 dead voters in Michigan and hundreds of dead voters in Pennsylvania cast their ballots

A Twitter user shared a link providing the first and last names of just over 14,500 individuals as well as their postal codes and birth years. All of the voters listed were over the age of 100. Based on the age of the listed voters, the author of the post claimed that these persons were those “dead voters” from Detroit’s Wayne County who cast their ballots in the presidential elections.

PolitFact and CNN have fact-checked the claims.  CNN examined 50 of the more than 14,000 names on the list by taking the first 25 names on the list and then 25 more picked at random. CNN ran the names through Michigan’s Voter Information database to see if they requested or returned a ballot. Then they checked the names against publicly available records to see if they were indeed dead. Of the 50, 37 were indeed dead and had not voted. The remaining 13 people are alive and all of them are above 100. CNN reached out to them and clarified that five of them had voted and eight did not vote. CNN’s experiment casts doubt on the claim voiced in the post that dead voters cast their ballots in the elections.

PolitFact also clarifies that even if some of 14,500 individuals were dead and still had the status of eligible voters (ballot papers were sent via mail), it does not confirm that the Michigan administration automatically considered the ballot papers received from these people valid and counted their votes. Registration of a dead individual may remain active in the electoral database due to a technical error; however, mail-in ballots pass through several steps of authentication, including verification of signatures that absolutely rules out mass use of dead voters’ identifies for ballot fraud.

In some cases, the electoral database may contain a mechanical error made upon registration of voters. The news about 118-year-old voter from Detroit named William Bradley that went viral on social media is an example of such error. According to public records, Bradley was born in 1902 and died in 1984. A search of the Michigan Voter Information Center for “William Bradley” revealed that the latter cast ballot in 2020. In fact, not late William Bradley, but his son, 61-year-old William Bradley cast a ballot in the 2020 elections. The latter is alive and resides at the same address listed for the late Bradley. The vote of 61-year-old Bradley was mistakenly attributed to his deceased father (who would have been 118 during the 2020 elections).

In case of Pennsylvania, viral tweets claimed that hundreds of voters above 100 cast their ballots in the elections. However, Pennsylvanian officials and election experts told The Associated Press that it is common for state voter rolls to include voters with birthdates that make them appear “impossibly old”, but these are usually explained by human error, as well as “a standard birthdate” assigned to some voters and automatically used by the electronic systems of various states. Upon registration of a ballot paper in the electronic system, it is necessary to complete all lines, but if a voter does not indicate a birthdate on an absentee ballot, it will be automatically completed with the birthdate 01/01/1900 or 01/01/1800 that creates a false impression that a dead voter cast a ballot.

  • A list of around of 10,000 ‘dead voters’ posted on Twitter is built on false matches of names and birthdates

According to another post, around 10,000 “dead absentee voters” cast their ballots in Michigan. The author of the tweet published a list of those dead voters, including their first and last names, birth and death dates who allegedly cast ballots in the 2020 presidential elections. In fact, the State of Michigan really has a database, where, after indicating a voter’s name, surname, postal code and birthdate, it is possible to verify whether this particular person cast a ballot. In addition, there are several U.S. websites that include databases of death records. But use of these databases to prove the claims of Trump’s supporters would be a fundamental problem, because considering number of American population (328 million people), the possibility of finding false matches is very high.

BBC has also verified the authenticity of 10,000 “dead voters” list. To test the list, BBC reporters picked 31 names at random and managed to speak directly to 11 people to confirm they were still alive. For 17 others, there was no public record of their death. Finally, BBC found that three people on the list were indeed dead. According to BBC, a clear pattern emerged – the wrong records had been joined together to create a false match. In particular, death dates of non-Michigan residents with the same names and age were ascribed to the names of those people, who, according to Michigan’s electoral database, cast their ballots in this state in 2020.

See Myth Detector’s article about the U.S. elections:

Georgian Trumpists, Ultranationalist and Pro-Kremlin Media Outlets Seek to Protect American Democracy


See information about Alt-Info at the following link
See information about Konstantine Morgoshia at the following link


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Topic: Politics
Violation: Disinformation
Country: USA
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Alt-Info

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Morgoshia Konstantine

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