A social media post claims that North Carolina’s ballot for the November election was “tampered with” to harm former President Donald Trump.
“Reports suggest Trump is expected to finish at the bottom of the ballot in North Carolina,” said the August 27 post on X, formerly Twitter. “This is indefensible and a clear attempt at voter manipulation.”
A day after the claim was published, it was viewed nearly 1 million times.
Pundits and political strategists pay attention to the order of names on a ballot because researchers have found that candidates whose names appear first tend to perform better than candidates whose names appear lower on the ballot.
The names of some of Trump’s opponents in the presidential election appear higher on the North Carolina ballot than Trump’s own, but there is no evidence that the ballot was tampered with.
North Carolina state law requires the order of candidates’ names to be determined by a drawing of lots, and election officials have used this procedure for many years.
For this year’s election, the state committee conducted the drawing on December 15.
First, election officials place 26 balls, each labeled with a letter of the alphabet, into a bingo wheel. An election official spins the wheel until a ball comes out.
This year the ball featured the letter D.
Election officials then flip a coin to see whether the candidates are listed in alphabetical order (heads) or in reverse alphabetical order (tails).
This year, the coin featured “heads,” meaning that candidates would appear on the ballot in alphabetical order, beginning with the letter “D.” Candidates are sorted by last name.
The state electoral committee determined that the candidates would run in the following order: D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, A, B, C.
As a result, the names of five presidential candidates – Kamala Harris, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Chase Oliver, Jill Stein and Randall Terry – appear above Trump’s name on the ballot.
Kennedy recently suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump, but his name remains on the ballot because the We The People party that nominated Kennedy did not ask the state election board to remove his name from the ballot.
If President Joe Biden had not dropped out of the race, his name would have appeared on the final ballot.
Trump has had better luck in previous drawings, appearing first on the ballot in both the 2016 and 2020 elections.
In 2020, the names of the candidates appeared alphabetically starting with the letter O. In 2016, the names of the candidates appeared alphabetically starting with the letter H.
PolitiFact NC contacted user X who claimed this year’s election was rigged, but the user did not respond.
Our verdict
The article said the order of names on the North Carolina ballot represented a “clear attempt at election rigging.”
There is no evidence that the North Carolina election was rigged. We rate this claim as false.
