PolitiFact: Difference in voter roll data and election results does not indicate a crime

In a report on the 2022 election, New York Citizens Audit, a group that has cast doubt on election administration, claimed there were 35,312 more votes cast than there were voters who voted.

“Certification of New York’s 2022 general election appears to be a federal crime; a civil rights violation acting under color of law. Why?” the group wrote.

New York Citizens Audit has questioned the results of the 2020 and 2022 elections in appearances around the state, and its findings have been rebutted by state and county elections officials.

To arrive at the supposed discrepancy, the report’s authors compared all the votes cast in the U.S. Senate race in 2022, numbering 5,965,684, with the voter roll database that showed who voted in the 2022 election, some 5,930,372 in all.

The group submitted a Freedom of Information Law request to the state Board of Elections for the voter roll.

We asked Marly Hornik, the group’s executive director, about the claim that certification of the results might be unlawful. She said that a U.S. Justice Department publication states that it is misconduct to certify something that is neither accurate nor compliant.

“Because every American has a fundamental civil right to an accurate and compliant election, that constitutes a deprivation of rights acting under color of law,” Hornik said.

The Justice Department publication states broadly that election fraud can involve the counting of ballots and certification of results, and that voters have a right to have their votes counted “fairly and honestly.” But the claim New York Citizens Audit makes, that a ballot count from one dataset should always match up to a voter tally from another data set, is not mentioned in the Justice Department document as an example of voter fraud.

Another federal document, the Guide to the Canvass, warns…