Biden didn’t tell voters not to vote

Shortly before the Jan. 23 primary, some New Hampshire voters received a robocall suggesting they stay away from the polls. That call appeared to come from President Joe Biden.

A voice, that sounds like the president, begins the call.

“What a bunch of malarkey.” he says, in a robotic and monotone voice. “We know the value of voting Democratic when our votes count. It’s important that you save your vote for the November election. We’ll need your help in electing Democrats up and down the ticket. Voting this Tuesday only enables the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump again. Your vote makes a difference in November, not this Tuesday.”

The Biden-like voice tells people to call a number if they want “to be removed from future calls.”

But this claim amounts to a bunch of “malarkey,” according to PolitiFact. Biden didn’t record the message and the phone number to cancel wasn’t legitimate.

That number to call was actually the cellphone number for Kathleen Sullivan, treasurer for Granite for America, a political action committee encouraging voters to write in Biden’s name on the ballot.

Sullivan began receiving several calls she didn’t recognize, on Jan. 21, and learned she was a target of the fake robocall, she told PolitiFact. She contacted the attorney general, and the justice department began an investigation.

In a statement the following day, the Office of the Attorney General said the voice on the robocall seemed to be “artificially generated.”

“These messages appear to be an unlawful attempt to disrupt the New Hampshire Presidential Primary Election and to suppress New Hampshire voters,” the release said.

Churchill didn’t say that

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis bowed out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination last week by posting his closing message on social media, along with a quote attributed to former British prime minister Winston Churchill.

“I can’t ask our supporters to volunteer their time, and donate their resources, if we don’t have a clear path to victory. Accordingly, I am today suspending my campaign,” DeSantis says in the Jan. 21, four-and-a-half-minute video posted on X.

“Winston Churchill once remarked that success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts,” he says toward the end of the message.

But the quote attribution was incorrect, according to Reuters.

There is no evidence Churchill ever used this phrase, which is "frequently shared as an inspirational quote on social media,” Spencer Jones, a senior lecturer in Armed Forces and War Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, told Reuters.

Canterbury Christ Church University professor Kevin Ruane, who wrote a book about Churchill, told Reuters, "Churchill was an incredible wordsmith, and forged so many memorable phrases over a long career, but he's also probably had as many invented quotes attached to him as he created himself. However you frame it, Gov. DeSantis made his final bow with a blooper.”

Trial delay wasn’t about election

Former President Donald Trump’s defamation trial in New York, over comments he made about writer E. Jean Carroll, who claims he sexually assaulted her, was delayed last week, ahead of the New Hampshire primary.

Some social media users claimed the decision was to interfere in the election.

“BREAKING: The judge in Trump’s E. Jean Carroll defamation trial just delayed todays trial until tomorrow — the day of the NH primary,” reads a Jan. 22 post on X.

But the delay wasn’t about the primary election, according to the Associated Press. The civil trial was delayed due to illness.

One of the nine jurors felt ill, and he was told to go home and take a COVID-19 test, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan told the court on Monday.

The trial resumed on Thursday.

Election won’t be canceled

A recent social media post suggested the election could be canceled.

“There is more and more talk about a possible cancellation of the elections in the United States this year,” reads the caption, translated from Spanish, in a video posted to Instagram on Jan. 14.

But this isn’t going to happen, according to USA Today. An election can be delayed, but it can’t be canceled.

Congress has the power to choose the time of the general election, based on Article II of the Constitution, and in 1845 set the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, every fourth year, as Election Day. But Congress would have to enact a new law to postpone the election.

“It is impossible to cancel an election,” St. Thomas University professor Juan-Carlos Planas told USA Today. “The presidential election is handled by the 50 states and the District of Columbia, and they all run separately and independently of each other.”

• Bob Oswald is a veteran Chicago-area journalist and former news editor of the Elgin Courier-News. Contact him at boboswald33@gmail.com.