As the 2024 presidential election draws closer, social media users are crying foul over what they claim is an instance of voter fraud in Missouri.
An Instagram reel shared a screenshot from X that claimed state voter registrations spiked unusually.
"Missouri registered 78,421 in just ONE WEEK of February of this year," the screenshotted post claimed. "Out of that number, 23,253 were DEAD PEOPLE! Here we go, AGAIN!"
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The screenshot cited Tim Pool, a conservative commentator and podcaster, as its source.
Pool talked about the registrations during an April 3 episode of his podcast, saying the figures came from the Social Security Administration’s Help America Vote Verification database for the week of Feb. 17.
"These are voter registrations where someone is trying to use a Social Security number and a name, and when it came back to the (Social Security Administration), they said that person is dead," Pool said.
He questioned how it didn’t strike officials as "odd" that nearly a third of the people who tried to register to vote in Missouri that week were not alive. (Pool is one of six Tenet Media content creators whose work is under scrutiny following a federal indictment alleging two employees of Russia-owned broadcaster RT paid Tenet to push pro-Russian propaganda.)
Social Security Administration and Missouri secretary of state officials said Pool’s framing of the data was incorrect.
The Help America Vote Verification database shows the number of verification requests sent by a state’s election office to confirm a person’s eligibility to vote —not the number of people who registered to vote in a given week — a Social Security Administration spokesperson said in a statement sent to PolitiFact.
"Under the Help America Vote Act, when a voter registrant does not have a driver’s license, states are permitted to submit the voter registrant’s name, date of birth and last four digits of their Social Security number to the Social Security Administration for verification," the statement said.
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Forty-three states use the database, which tracks the total number of verification requests processed in a given week. It breaks down how many requests can be matched to people who are alive or dead. It does not tally the number of people who are registered to vote or who are trying to register to vote.
In a previous fact-check related to the database, PolitiFact found that states can run a verification request for a person multiple times, contributing to the overall numbers.
JoDonn Chaney, communications director for the Missouri secretary of state’s office, told PolitiFact that the state’s local election authorities have a mandate to clean their voter rolls. As part of that process, they would periodically ping the database to determine who should be removed, based on whether they had left the state or died.
"We don’t have that information of people attempting to register based on the number (referred to in the claim)," he said. "We don’t see that as people attempting to register to vote."
Chaney provided a month-by-month breakdown of the state’s number of registered voters, showing the video’s claim was off base.
Missouri had 4,270,843 voters in January and 4,268,935 million in February — a decline of 1,908. The total number of voters in the state dropped by 574 people in March to 4,268,361.
The state in April had an increase of 20,250 registered voters, bringing the total number for that month to 4,288,611.
Madison Walker, a Missouri secretary of state’s office communication specialist, said there’s no specific reason for the spike, but the timing coincided with presidential caucuses and general municipal elections.
The state never had 78,421 people register to vote within a single week.
Our ruling
An Instagram reel claimed data from the Social Security Administration showed that Missouri "registered 78,421 in just one week of February of this year" and that "23,253 were dead people!"
The numbers cited in the claim come from the administration’s Help America Vote Verification database, which states use to verify people’s voter information. States can send multiple verification requests for a single person, which adds to the overall numbers shown in the database.
These numbers don’t represent voter registrations.
We rate this claim False.
