Did you hear the one about bogus ballots in Ohio? It’s fake.

Credit: DaytonDailyNews

There is a fake story ripping through the Internet about a Columbus warehouse full of bogus ballots filled out for Hillary Clinton. Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted has one word for it: hoax.

“That is a completely 100 percent fabricated story. The photo they used to try to sell their story was from an election that occurred in Europe. They didn’t even contact the Franklin County Board of Elections or our office about it. It is a complete hoax and fabrication,” Husted told AM1290 and News 95.7 WHIO Tuesday morning. “There is no truth to it at all.”

Snopes.com investigates and tries to correct wild, inaccurate stories that catch fire on the Internet. It reported that the Christian Times Newspaper web site published a false report on Sept. 30, 2016 claiming that tens of thousands of ballots marked for Clinton and other Democrats were discovered by a maintenance worker in an Ohio warehouse. The story said: "Clinton campaign's likely goal was to slip the fake ballot boxes in with the real ballot boxes when they went to official election judges on November 8th."

Snopes said CTN altered a photo taken in England in 2015 of a man unloading ballot boxes from a truck and added: “ the web site has invented and promoted numerous conspiracy theories, including false stories reporting that Donald Trump was removed from primary ballots, that Clinton said ‘Harambe’ was a victim of racism, that an African-American Trump supporter was killed in Chicago, and that the 4th of July had been cancelled due to fears of terrorism.”

Husted, a Republican who is prohibited from endorsing candidates in a presidential election, said: “It’s kind of offensive – some of the made-up stories that are floating around there. And really undermine confidence in our elections. It’s our job to try to build confidence. America is the greatest democracy in the world, in my opinion, and we need to all participate in it and strengthen it and turn it over even stronger to the next generation of Americans.”

About the Author