A look at what didn’t happen this week

A roundup of some 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:

CLAIM: More than 128 million people tuned in to watch the Republican National Convention’s opening day, compared to just over 20 million who watched the Democratic National Convention.

THE FACTS: There’s no data to back this up. In fact, available metrics show more viewers tuned into the first night of the DNC than the first night of the RNC. The Associated Press reported an estimated 17 million people watched the last hour of the Republican National Convention’s opening night on Aug. 24 on television. That is lower than the estimated 19.7 million who tuned into the first night of the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 17. The estimates come from the Nielsen company, and account for viewers of 11 television networks.

There is no way to truly calculate the total views across platforms, including all online streaming options. False claims circulated on Twitter and Facebook about viewership between the conventions. “Day 1 of the DNC: 21.4 Million Views. Day 1 of the RNC: 128.4 Million,” reads one widely shared Facebook post. The AP could find no evidence for the 128.4 million figure cited in the post, which is six times greater than the figure listed for the DNC. A headline in The Hill did announce, “First night of GOP convention delivers nearly six times more views than start of Democrats’ event on C-SPAN live stream.” The article only referred to online C-SPAN views, which were 440,000 on the opening day of the RNC, compared to 76,000 for the DNC.

It is possible that the 128.4 million figure in the post was generated by taking 21.4 million, which was a preliminary Nielsen estimate for the third night of the DNC, and multiplying it by six, based on a misunderstanding of the headlines about the C-SPAN numbers. Nielsen estimated the GOP enjoyed slightly more viewers than Democrats on the second night of conventions, when an estimated 19.4 million tuned into the RNC on television, versus 19.2 million who tuned into the DNC. Democrats had more viewers on the third night, with an estimated 22.8 million viewers compared to 17.3 million for Republicans. And on the final night of their respective events, the Democrats had 24.6 million viewers, while Republicans had 23.8 million.

— AP writer Jude Joffe-Block reported from Berkeley, California.

CLAIM: Photos show four police officers who were injured by Democrats and Black Lives Matter rioters over the weekend in Portland, Seattle and nearby cities.

THE FACTS: The officers in the photos weren’t injured at U.S. protests — in fact, they were on the other side of the world. The four photos in a post being shared on social media show police officers who sustained injuries in various parts of Australia in 2006, 2009, 2012 and 2019.

On Aug. 25, a grid of the four photos, featuring bloodied and bandaged police officers, was circulating widely on Facebook with more than 1,200 shares and 56,000 views. “50 police officers were injured by Dems and BLM rioters over the weekend in Portland Seattle and other nearby cities,” the caption read. “Pray for their safety.” However, research into the photos reveals they were all taken in Australia — and not over the weekend.

The photo on the top left shows a police officer kneeling in the street with his forehead dripping blood. It can be traced to a September 2012 protest in Sydney, where demonstrations against a film perceived as anti-Islamic grew violent, according to local news reports with the photo.

The photo on the top right shows a police officer sitting indoors, her face covered in scratches and one hand stretched across her body t. Police released the photo in April 2019, after a man on parole in a Sydney suburb allegedly bit and scratched a 22-year-old officer during a welfare check, according to local reports featuring the image.

In the bottom left is a photo of a police officer on what appears to be a hospital bed, his eyes closed and his uniform marred by dark stains. It stems from a Western Australia pub fight in March 2006 when a bar patron attacked a police officer trying to break it up, according to local news reports using the photo.

The photo on the bottom right shows a police officer with swollen eyes and a bandage wrapped around the middle of his face. It was taken after a Christmas Day 2009 fight in Western Australia, which resulted in a police officer getting struck in the face with a brick, according to local news stories at the time.

Though these photos don’t relate to recent Black Lives Matter protests in the United States, several police officers have been injured in the demonstrations across the nation in the wake of George Floyd’s death. The AP has reported on several such incidents, including at protests in Seattle and Portland.

— AP writer Ali Swenson reported from Seattle.

CLAIM: If a voter mails a ballot on Sunday and then shows up to a polling station to vote in person on Tuesday, election workers will not know whether the person has already voted.

THE FACTS: Anyone who tries to vote twice with the intent of both ballots counting could be prosecuted for voter fraud, and there are checks in place to prevent a person from voting twice. When a voter shows up to vote in person, the poll book will typically indicate if the voter has been issued a vote-by-mail ballot — and may even show the poll worker if that ballot has already been processed.

States vary on what happens next. In some states, a poll worker may be able to void the mailed ballot if the voter prefers to vote in person. In other states, the voter will be given a provisional ballot and election officials will later determine if the provisional ballot should be counted or not. Vote-by-mail ballots are verified before they are counted, and one check is whether the voter already voted.

Yet social media users are sharing a post that suggests a loophole. “This is real — If I mail in my ballot on Sunday and show up to the polling station on Tuesday, they won’t know if I’ve already voted or not. That my friends…. is a serious concern for all of us,” reads the inaccurate post.

Matthew Weil, director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Elections Project warned that waiting until the Sunday before Election Day to mail a ballot will be too late in many states to have the ballot count. Deadlines vary by state, and voting experts say voters should check the laws in their state.

— Jude Joffe-Block

CLAIM: Photos show after a recent motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, the street was clean, while after protests in Seattle, the sidewalk was covered in mounds of trash.

THE FACTS: The photo that social media users claim shows Seattle was, in fact, taken across the country. It shows trash left on a street after a fire in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York — not in the Seattle neighborhood where protesters formed an autonomous zone earlier this year, as suggested by inaccurate social media posts.

The photo was taken from a video shot in Brooklyn by Manny Lorras, who captured the aftermath of a fire triggered by a cigarette thrown into trash. As for the photo from Sturgis, the exact date and time it was taken could not be determined, so it’s not clear whether it’s from after the 80th Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

The AP reported thousands attended the rally from Aug. 7 to 16 despite coronavirus concerns. Each year the city measures how many people attended the event by weighing all the trash that’s generated, and this year, a city official said that total was 444 tons, down from 551 tons last year. The streets were cleaned afterward.

Lorras’ video, shot June 2, was shared by Instagram account Greenpointers. “The large amount of trash sprawled across West Street on Tuesday morning was caused by a lit cigarette tossed from an apartment erupting the pile of trash bags in flames, surveillance video shows, and is apparently not related to the demonstrations last night,” said the Greenpointers Instagram post.

— AP writer Beatrice Dupuy reported from New York.