Fact check: How does the Election Truth Alliance's evidence compare to official 2024 election audit results?

1. What ETA actually claims — Strange signals and “Russian Tail” patterns

The Election Truth Alliance asserts that Early Voting in Clark County showed anomalies absent from Mail-In and Election Day ballots, and that North Carolina exhibited unusual down-ballot divergences and turnout patterns consistent with manipulation; ETA frames these as statistical fingerprints of interference or falsification and urges hand counts and full audits prior to certification ^{[1] [2] [5]}. ETA’s shortform and full analyses present graphs and pattern language such as a “Russian Tail,” describing vote-share trajectories they interpret as non-random; those claims are recent (January and September 2025) and form the substantive evidence ETA asks officials and the public to consider ^{[1] [2] [5]}.

2. What official audits report — routine procedures and tiny discrepancies

State-level official audit documentation emphasizes routine, legally mandated post-election audits: Washington state describes Random Batch and Risk-Limiting Audits performed by counties after each election, while Maryland’s 2024 post-election manual ballot tabulation audit checked 72,767 ballots and found a statewide contest discrepancy of 0.004% — a magnitude that would not change outcomes ^{[6] [3]}. These official reports, dated late 2025 and December 2025, stress that audits are designed to confirm tabulation accuracy and that findings have so far not produced outcome-altering errors in those jurisdictions ^{[6] [3]}.

3. Direct comparisons — ETA patterns versus audit findings

Comparing ETA’s alleged anomalies to official audits exposes a mismatch in claims versus verification: ETA identifies statistical irregularities at the precinct and ballot-type level (Early Voting vs. Election Day), whereas available state audits operate at batch- or ballot-sample levels focused on overall contest results and tabulation accuracy. Maryland’s and Washington’s audits concentrate on vote-count integrity and risk-limiting measures, reporting vanishingly small discrepancies; ETA’s flagged patterns are not directly addressed or refuted in those audit reports, leaving a gap between pattern claims and the audit metrics reported ^{[1] [2] [6] [3]}.

4. Methodological gaps and mutual blind spots that matter

ETA’s analyses emphasize granular temporal and ballot-type patterns but do not appear to present reconciliations against official audit samples or chain-of-custody records in the cited materials, while official audits as described are not structured to detect every form of pattern anomaly ETA highlights — risk-limiting audits target vote totals per contest rather than fine-grained vote-time distributions. This methodological mismatch means neither side fully adjudicates the other’s evidence: ETA’s pattern claims need direct audit-style recounts or targeted forensic sampling to be dispositive, and audits could consider targeted tests of the specific phenomena ETA reports ^{[1] [2] [3]}.

5. Independent research and calls for transparency — overlapping recommendations

Both critiques and official processes converge on the need for transparency and robust independent checks: ETA explicitly calls for hand counts and full audits prior to certification, while election administrators documented by official sources emphasize routine audits and risk-limiting procedures as protections. The Caltech Election Integrity Project referenced in the official-source cluster signals academic engagement with election administration and technology as an additional context for independent studies, although that project’s cited material is from 2026 and thus postdates some ETA claims ^{[4] [7]}. The shared emphasis on independent verification creates a narrow path for resolving substantive conflicts through targeted reexamination.

6. What’s missing — what would decisively reconcile the claims

Resolving the contrast requires transparent, targeted reconciliations: forensic audits that sample the specific Early Voting batches and precincts ETA flags, public release of chain-of-custody and ballot-level audit artifacts to neutral analysts, and replication of ETA’s statistical methods by independent statisticians using official ballot-level data. Neither the ETA reports nor the official audit summaries provided here document that such cross-verification has occurred; absent that, official audits showing minuscule statewide discrepancies and ETA’s precinct-level anomaly allegations remain empirically adjacent but not reconciled ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}.

7. Bottom line — current evidentiary balance and next steps for clarity

As of the latest documents supplied, official audits report procedural audit coverage and trivial statewide discrepancies, while ETA presents localized pattern anomalies that official audits do not directly address, creating an evidentiary gap rather than a demonstrated contradiction. The most constructive next steps are targeted, transparent reconciliations: replicate ETA’s analyses on certified audit data, conduct focused ballot-level audits of the specific batches ETA highlights, and publish methods and raw data for neutral review; only then can the claims be definitively compared and either integrated into official findings or explained as statistical artifacts ^{[1] [2] [6] [3] [4]}.