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The Atlantic headline about Harris stealing elections is not true

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The Atlantic headline about Harris stealing elections is not true

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The claim: Image shows headline from The Atlantic about how Kamala Harris ‘may have to steal an election’

An October 15 Instagram post ( direct link , archive link ) shows what appears to be a headline published by The Atlantic about Vice President Kamala Harris and the 2024 presidential election.

“To save democracy, Harris may need to steal an election,” says the supposed headline.

A summary under the headline reads: “Constitutional scholars already worried about another Jan. 6 crisis and warn upcoming election may be harder to salvage.”

A similar post on Facebook was shared more than 200 times in a day before it was deleted.

More from the data verification team: How we choose and investigate claims | Electronic newsletter | Facebook page

Our Rating: Altered

The image is a fabrication. The Atlantic said the headline is an altered version of a 2021 article titled “Kamala Harris Might Have to Stop the Steal.”

The Atlantic’s fabricated headline spread after Harris’ endorsement

The Atlantic endorsed Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, in an Oct. 10 article, marking the magazine’s fifth presidential endorsement since its founding in 1857. It endorsed Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Lyndon B .Johnson in 1964, Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe. Biden in 2020.

But The Atlantic ran no headlines suggesting that the survival of democracy in the US might depend on Harris committing voter fraud.

Anna Bross, a spokeswoman for The Atlantic, pointed to an Oct. 15 company statement that said the magazine has never published a headline like this.

“The false headline misrepresents an Atlantic article published on October 6, 2021, which was published under the headline ‘Kamala Harris Might Have to Stop the Steal,'” the statement said.

Checking the facts: Altered image misrepresents Trump’s post on Iran

This 2021 article includes the summary in the Instagram image, but does not examine how Harris steals the 2024 election. Rather, it explores a hypothetical scenario in which Republicans aligned with former President Donald Trump attempt to undermine the upcoming 5 of November and how Harris, in his role as vice president overseeing the Electoral College recount, could stop them.

Since the article was published, Congress has revised the Election Counting Act of 1887 to make clear that the vice president’s role in the process is purely ceremonial. The reform, included in a spending bill that Biden signed in December 2022, also raised the threshold of lawmakers needed to oppose a list of presidential electors, from a member of the Senate and House of Representatives to at least one fifth of each house.

USA TODAY reached out to Instagram and Facebook users who shared the post for comment, but did not immediately hear back.

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