FBI didn’t find more than 20K fraudulent Democratic ballots in Houston raid

As U.S. citizens headed to the polls to vote in the midterm elections on Nov. 3, people shared a rumor alleging the FBI uncovered more than 20,000 fraudulent Democratic ballots in a raid of a storage facility in Texas.

For example, on Election Day, a user named Jonathan Gregory posted on Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived) and X (archived) a headline reading, “OVER TWENTY THOUSAND FRAUDULENT BALLOTS UNCOVERED IN FBI RAID OF HOUSTON STORAGE LOCKER WAREHOUSE ALL FOR DEMOCRATS.” That post, along with others on Facebook and X, displayed three images and said the alleged raid happened in Houston:

An FBI raid of a storage locker warehouse in Houston Texas last night uncovered over twenty thousand fraudulent ballots all marked in favor of Democratic candidates. Agents seized the massive stash during the operation after tips led them to the facility where the ballots had been stored and prepared for distribution. The discovery has sent shockwaves through the election system as officials scramble to determine how many of these illegal ballots may have already been cast or were ready to be injected into the count.

Every single one of the fraudulent ballots was filled out for Democratic candidates which points to a coordinated effort to tip races across the state. Investigators are now examining the origin of the ballots the people who controlled the storage units and any connections to political operatives or campaigns. This is not an isolated incident but clear evidence of organized ballot fraud designed to overwhelm legitimate votes.

The American people deserve immediate answers and full transparency about who was behind this warehouse full of fake ballots. Texas and the nation cannot allow such brazen attempts to steal elections to go unpunished. Law enforcement must pursue every lead and ensure these fraudulent votes never count.

People who left comments under the Facebook and X posts appeared to believe the FBI truly conducted a raid uncovering many thousands of fraudulent ballots. Snopes readers emailed us and searched this website to find more information.

In sum, our research quickly found this rumor was false and may have originated as satire. Gregory displays his Facebook page category as being a comedian. His Instagram and X accounts don’t display such a label. None of Gregory’s profiles specifically mention the word “satire,” though he has previously used the term near the very end of some of his posts — potentially as a way of hinting at the truth about his content. (Because the effectiveness of satire is subjective, we use “originated as satire” and “labeled satire” ratings based on creators’ own descriptions of their work.)

Rosio Torres-Segura, a spokesperson for the Harris County Clerk’s Office in Houston, confirmed Snopes’ conclusion: “The information circulating on social media is false.”

We also reached out to Gregory via Messenger to ask if he wished to speak about social media users appearing to believe the claim that the FBI found thousands of fraudulent ballots in Houston and will update this article if we receive a response.

The bogus story spread in the aftermath of a reported incident involving the same number of ballots. On Monday, the Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s request to set aside 20,000 ballots the FBI alleged may have been issued to noncitizens.

Further research

Reverse image searches for the post’s three images found photos pertaining to unrelated matters in Atlanta and San Francisco, as well as the picture of a building matching that of a Houston storage company.

(@TrumpNews_Baby via X)

A scan of the text in Gregory’s posts with the Pangram artificial intelligence detection tool returned the results “100% of this text is AI,” as well as “We believe that this entire text is AI.”

Snopes doesn’t entirely lean on the purported accuracy of such tools for fact-check ratings. Rather, we consider scan results as one of at least several data points necessary to make a rating determination.

In the past, we’ve published fact-check articles about other matters originating from Gregory’s social media accounts, all of which involved false claims.

For more about the midterm elections, look to our live updates blog for all of Snopes’ Election Day coverage.

Sources