Fake Picture: Protest Demanding Mail-in Voting
The Claim
The picture below depicts a Seattle protest to demand mail-in voting for the upcoming U.S. presidential election.
News posted on
Emerging story
In mid-August 2020, social media users began sharing a picture posted by a Twitter account called Walter Cronkite Says, named after the famed American broadcast journalist. Users called the protest "ridiculous" and the people who attended it "hypocrites."
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar’s investigation found that the caption accompanying the photo is false. We conducted a reverse image search and found that the photo originally appeared in the West Seattle Blog on June 6, 2020. The protest was part of the Black Lives Matter protests against racial injustice.
The picture was posted following nationwide distress over the pandemic, the upcoming presidential election, and mail-in voting. While there have been some protests demanding mail-in voting, none of them have been nearly as crowded as the viral picture indicates.
