As President Donald Trump refuses to concede the election to President-elect Joe Biden, maintaining that the election was "rigged" and "stolen" from him, a new allegation has been put forth by the Trump campaign.
In a series of tweets pushing election fraud conspiracy theories on Twitter on Wednesday, Trump claimed in one of his tweets that Biden received an illegal "dump" of 143,379 votes in Wisconsin hours after polls closed on Election Day "when they learned he was losing badly."
Trump's tweet included a graph showing a surge in votes for the former Vice President in the state at 3:42 a.m. on Nov. 4.
It is true that Biden picked up about 149,000 in Wisconsin around 3:30 a.m. in the early morning hours following the election, allowing Biden to flip the majority in his favor, erasing a lead Trump had maintained in the state up to that point. However, fact-checking website Snopes confirmed that there was no fraudulent activity behind the vote "dump."
The Truth Behind the Biden Vote 'Dump
Biden's vote count experienced a significant jump around the above-mentioned time because that was when Milwaukee reported the tabulation of its approximately 170,000 mail-in and absentee ballots, a majority of which were cast by Democrats.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported about the spike in Biden votes and the reasons behind it, at the time.
"Biden overtook Trump in the early morning hours when Milwaukee reported its roughly 170,000 absentee votes, which were overwhelmingly Democratic. Then early morning returns from Green Bay and Kenosha on Wednesday added to his slender lead," the article read. "Trump had nurtured a lead of more than 100,000 votes before those returns came in."
The following morning even Trump had acknowledged the surge in mail-in ballots in most states being heavily Democratic, in large part because he discouraged his supporters from using that method of voting and opt for in-person voting instead.
In fact, more than two months before the election, NPR had noted that President Trump's campaign discouraging the use of mail-in voting "raised concerns" among Republicans that it might cost them the key swing state of Wisconsin.
Biden eventually won the state of Wisconsin, and its 10 electoral votes by just over 20,000 votes out of more than 3.2 million ballots cast. Trump is now pressing for recounts in the state's Democratic strongholds, Milwaukee and Dane County, as previously reported.
