A recent social media post claimed the ballot this November in North Carolina has been created in a way to hurt former President Donald Trump.
The post on X on Aug. 27 says “Reports show Trump is poised to appear near the bottom of the ballot in North Carolina. This is indefensible and a clear attempt at voter manipulation.” The post has been viewed more than 1 million times. Paul Specht, of WRAL, joins WFAE's Marshall Terry now to separate fact from fiction.
Marshall Terry: OK. This post included a picture of the ballot in North Carolina and Trump's name does appear near the bottom of the list of presidential candidates. Was that intentional? What's the process to create ballots in North Carolina?
Paul Specht: North Carolina state law requires the order of the candidate's names to be determined by a drawing. It's two parts. First, they use a bingo wheel — the cage that has the balls in it. And they place 26 balls in there each with a letter of the alphabet. They turn it, and turn it, and then a ball comes out and whatever letter is on that ball. That is a starting point for the last names of the candidates.
And then they flip a coin. Let's say you have the letter D — that's what came out this year out of the bingo wheel. They flip a coin to see whether the names will be ordered alphabetically — if it's heads — or in reverse alphabetical order, if it's tails.
And this year it was heads, so that meant the names will be listed in alphabetical order starting with the letter D. You start with D, you go all the way to Z and then circle back — so that A, B and C are at the very end.
They did this back in December. And, at the time, folks will remember President Joe Biden was at least poised to be the Democratic nominee for president. So his name would've been last if he had not dropped out.
Terry: Why does the order of names on the ballot even matter?
Specht: Researchers from across the country have looked into this and found that there is some benefit to being first on the ballot. And depending on the study, and depending on the race, there are different levels of advantages.
Some show less than 1% advantage, some show a little bit more than that, but people believe that having your name listed first gives you some sort of advantage. When people go, it's the first name that voters see when they get their ballot. I imagine that they get the first chance to make a last impression.
Terry: So this X post was made by Red Eagle politics. Who is that?
Specht: We don't really know. I reached out to this person on X, formerly known as Twitter, and asked, do you have any evidence that the ballot was manipulated in some way or perhaps the drawing? And this person never got back to us.
They don't use their full name, so I don't know how to get in touch with them.
But as part of our process, we always give everyone a chance to respond and sort of lay out their case. But in this case, the person did not.
Terry: So how did you rate this claim?
Specht: Well, they said that this shows an attempt at voter manipulation. We rated that false. I think it's important to point out the Elections Board has been doing this for years now, the same process. And in 2016 and 2020, Trump came out on top. And what I mean by that is in 2020 the letter O came out of that bingo wheel, which meant the alphabet started at letter O.
And in 2016, the letter H came out — that put Trump above Hillary Clinton in 2016, and it put Trump above Biden in 2020.
So there's no evidence here that the people who are doing this process are giving preferential treatment to any party, especially when we go back and look at the history.
Terry: Ali right. Thanks Paul.
