The Associated Press
A roundup of four of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

Nothing ‘secret’ about Arizona voting machine testing shown on video, officials say

CLAIM: Newly released video shows election officials in Arizona’s Maricopa County illegally conducting “secret” voting equipment tests ahead of last November’s contested midterms.

THE FACTS: The video comes from the county’s live broadcast of the election process last fall and isn’t new footage. Election officials say it shows the installation and testing of new memory cards on ballot counting machines just days prior to the November election. But social media users are falsely suggesting the video is new evidence of ballot rigging in the contested November election in the county, which covers the Phoenix area. The video shows a small group of election staffers working on vote tabulation machines in a large warehouse-like space. “New (asterisk)video evidence(asterisk) of Maricopa election officials illegally breaking into sealed election machines after they were tested, reprogramming memory cards,” wrote one Twitter user in a post that’s been liked or shared more than 133,000 times as of Thursday. “This is the story of a sabotage,” tweeted the campaign of Kari Lake, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully for Arizona governor, sharing the video. But there’s nothing new about the clip and it doesn’t show anything clandestine, say election officials and experts. Matt Roberts, a spokesperson for Maricopa County Election Department, said the video clips are from the county’s own livestream of its ballot tabulation center on Oct. 14, 17 and 18. He said workers in the video are installing new memory cards into the machines and then running test ballots to make sure the system is operating properly, a process that happens before every election. The county government also responded to the claims on Twitter, noting the idea that voting machines were secretly tested prior to the election came up in Lake’s lawsuit challenging the election, and that the judge found it “unconvincing.” Lake’s campaign argued in a legal filing earlier this month that 260 of the 446 vote center tabulators registered errors during this purportedly secret testing process, foreshadowing problems that would occur on Election Day, leading her to lose the governor’s office by some 17,000 votes. “They know they’re in hot water, the county’s own system logs tell the true story,” the campaign wrote in an email to the AP, referencing the argument. But the county, in a response filed in the court case, argued that Lake was misinterpreting the machine logs, assuming every instance when they noted a “ballot misread” or “paper jam” error represented a serious malfunction. The county said a range of situations could lead to the error messages, such as a ballot that’s inserted slightly askew. “These entries do not indicate failure; rather, they are a normal part of both testing tabulators and voting on them,” the county wrote in its filing. Weeks later, Maricopa County Superior Court judge dismissed Lake’s suit and affirmed the election of Democrat Katie Hobbs as governor, writing that “the evidence presented falls far below what is needed to establish a basis for fraud.” Paul Smith-Leonard, a spokesperson for the Arizona Secretary of State’s office, which oversees elections statewide, confirmed that the county’s description of its pre-election preparations was accurate. Tammy Patrick, CEO of programs at the National Association of Election Officials and a former officer in the Maricopa County Elections Department, agreed, stressing there’s nothing secret about the ballot counting process. “The live feed starts with the initial logic and accuracy testing and remains up until equipment is tested post-election,” Patrick explained in an email. “It is live for weeks in advance, 24X7, has been that way for every election, for YEARS.”
Associated Press writer Philip Marcelo in New York contributed this report.

European Union didn’t advise against COVID vaccines for pregnant women

CLAIM: The European Union is now advising that pregnant women should not receive COVID-19 vaccines because of the risk of infertility and miscarriage.

THE FACTS: The European Medicines Agency continues to support COVID-19 immunizations for pregnant women, the agency confirmed. An announcement that concerns menstrual bleeding, which is being cited to spread the false claim, is from October 2022 and explicitly stated that the vaccines are still safe before and during pregnancy. But social media users this week falsely asserted that the European Union had changed its tune on the vaccines. “The European Union is now warning pregnant women not to get the COVID-19 vaccine due to the possibility of infertility and miscarriage,” reads one popular Wednesday tweet that was also shared on Instagram. MORE