A baseless voting claim is being amplified by a network of social media accounts
ISD reveals that Russia is not the only country that publishes illegal and unlawful voter registration in swing states and tries to steal the election
ISD was unable to say who is behind the apparently coordinated network of accounts. The U.S. is prone to chaos and tension because of influence operations run by foreign governments.
A researcher was notified by X about a post even though he did not follow the account. The Telegram messaging app has been used by the accounts that share Russian propaganda and the message board 4chan to promote the posts.
One sign that accounts may be coordinated is that many of the posts shared identical language and images. Some repeat that the Democrats had it coming for not enforcing voter ID laws. Republicans in many states have pushed for more strict voter ID laws.
While the baseless claims about overseas voting frame Trump as the victim of illegal votes cast for Vice President Kamala Harris, many of the accounts that ISD identified boast that they actually voted for Trump in swing states.
The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, or UOCAVA, lets states set up systems to allow military members and American citizens living overseas to vote. The allegations surrounding the law are part of a larger narrative that the election will be stolen from Trump through a combination of lax voting laws and the possibility that noncitizens will illegally vote in large numbers and swing the very tight presidential race.
ISD said that the first post from the network was published on Oct. 22, not long after Republicans filed lawsuits challenging overseas voters’ ballots in a few swing states. Those lawsuits cast doubt on the eligibility of some overseas voters. Trump falsely claimed in a social media post in September that Democrats intended to use overseas ballots to “CHEAT” and manipulate the election results. The courts have not ruled in favor of the lawsuits.
The Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and Prussia are among countries that the accounts have shared images of with their passports. The accounts are reinforcing baseless narratives about voter fraud promoted by former President Donald Trump and his allies. The most popular post on X, with an image of a French passport, has more than 12 million views.
Election workers in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, are not destroying mail-in ballots cast for former President Donald Trump. The Department of Defense didn’t issue a directive last month to allow US soldiers to use lethal force on Trump supporters who riot if the ex-president is defeated next week. And no, 180,000 Amish people did not register to vote in Pennsylvania—given there are only 92,600 Amish living in the state, including minors. Ron DeSantis never said that Florida would not use Dominion Voting machines in next week’s election. In this year’s presidential election, Californians who are not US citizens are not allowed to vote.
Many of the narratives are being spread in ways that make it difficult for anyone else to know anything about one of the most important votes in US history.
The American Sunlight Project CEO, who was formerly the Biden administration’s communications czar, tells WIRED that she is most concerned about this year because there is a much more opaque window into the penetration of these lies. “Social media platforms have by and large stopped moderating such content, and just as worryingly, have cut off researcher access to data streams that allowed us to objectively report on the scale of these campaigns, all due to political pressure on disinformation researchers and social media platforms.”
“For a while there, every six months, they’d come up with a new conspiracy theory. It would be debunked. They’d have egg on their face. Adams said that they will go back in their hole for six months. You only get a limited amount of bites at that apple.
Using Artificial Intelligence to Attack Election Officials: A Debunker’s View on Election Lies and Conspiracy Theories in South Carolina
In the face of that landscape, election officials say they are controlling what they can control. They have spent countless hours reaching out to skeptical voters over the past four years, and they’re now clinging onto hope that work will make a difference in people’s willingness to accept election results.
If somebody used an artificial intelligence image to break into a drop box or destroy ballots, there would be a devastating effect. That kind of imagery could encourage violence in a close election and undermine Americans’ trust in our system.
X is the most glaring example, but other platforms have also backed away from the more aggressive stance they took in 2020, cut back on the number of people working on trust and safety, and are generally more quiet about the work they are doing. Meta now lets Facebook and Instagram users opt out of some features of its fact-checking program, while its text-based social network, Threads, has deemphasized news and politics.
“We try to not commit unforced errors,” said Stephen Richer, the Republican recorder in Maricopa County, Ariz., who has been an outspoken debunker of election lies. I think if someone really wants to make something look weird, they can do it.
Cramer, the election official in South Carolina, said one challenge for local governments dealing with false information online is how splintered the internet is. He has recently begun to see more wrong voting information on NextDoor.
“If you see something seemingly suspicious, and then you take a picture of it and post it online, that can be decontextualized so quickly and not take into account all of the various remedies or the fact that there’s nothing suspicious there at all,” she said.
Fossil Investigations of Musk’s Social Media Presence on the Internet, and Why Election Officials Are Worst Concerned about Trump and the Election
Danielle Lee Tomson, research manager at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, said such “evidence generation infrastructure” is more robust this year. She said that when these efforts identify real issues, they tend to ignore the checks in the system that catch problems.
When election officials try to correct Musk’s false claims, he has lashed out. Michigan’s secretary of state said that she and her staff received threats after she fact-checked Musk’s claim that the state has more eligible citizens than registered voters.
Musk is a prime example of a baseless theory that Democrats are bringing in immigrants to vote for them, as well as the basis for Trump and other Republican claims that the election was taken away from them.
One of the louder voices inciting false rumors and making false statements about the upcoming election holds a major communications platform. The wealthiest man in the world, Musk, took control of the social network two years ago and has since transformed it into a platform for Trump supporters.
Neil Makhija created an ice cream truck in order to encourage people to vote. Cramer, in Charleston County, co-wrote a children’s book. An app that could deliver accurate election information directly to people inDurham county was invented by the man.
Increasingly election officials are thinking outside the box to reach voters, because trying to fight fire with fire on social media has felt like a losing battle for years now, says Carolina Lopez, a former election official from Miami-Dade County, Fla.
Warner told NPR that the government needs to get this information out quickly and that the stakes are less than our democracy.
Warner wrote an open letter last month urging the CISA to put more resources into helping state and local governments identify and respond to election misinformation.
In Charleston County,S.C., the elections administrator said to get the message out first and be as proactive as possible.
Local election officials are trying to get more attention from the media and people about their processes. State election officials in several swing states have begun holding multiple press conferences every week leading up to the election.
“What we are really trying to encourage them to do is to know that it is your state and local election official that is the signal through that noise,” Conley said.
There has been no sign of foreign adversaries in the election or voting systems. But attackers don’t have to succeed in order to undermine confidence, Conley, the election security expert, said.
The FBI and the DHS are warning Americans of the possible uses of foreign actors to interfere in the election.
Russian operatives used fake news to spread misinformation, prosecutors brought charges against employees of Russian state television for their involvement in a scheme to fund right-wing pro-Trump American users, and the Justice Department seized websites that Russians used to spoof American news outlets.
The video is a fake. The envelopes and ballots shown don’t match what that county actually uses to vote. U.S. officials said it was created and spread by Russia to sow doubt in the election.
Source: Voting officials face ‘an uphill battle’ to fight election lies
Detecting Election Fraud with the Department of Homeland Security: The Role of Russia and Russia in the Campaign to Fight Election Lüths
The chair of the Senate intelligence committee, Mark Warner, told NPR that misinformation is cheap and effective.
America’s geopolitical adversaries — particularly Russia, Iran and China — are expected to seize on election fraud claims, however unfounded, and generate their own material undermining the results, as part of their larger goals to sow chaos and discredit democracy.
Federal intelligence and law enforcement officials are taking a more aggressive approach this year in calling out foreign meddling. In the summer of 2016 the Obama administration was reticent to publicly disclose the full scope of Russia’s efforts in favor of Trump.
The Department of Homeland Security cyber agency is currently facing the most complex threat environment compared to a prior cycle, said Cait Conley in an interview with NPR.
“If I lose — I’ll tell you what, it’s possible. The reason they cheat is because. At the September rally, Trump stated that they were going to lose if they didn’t cheat.
Perhaps the biggest factor is former President Donald Trump, who continues to falsely assert he won the 2020 election, despite courts and investigations finding no evidence of fraud. He has already set the stage to reject the results should he lose again this year.
Source: Voting officials face ‘an uphill battle’ to fight election lies
A Russian Propaganda Operation that Attempts to Put Their Fingers in the Dike Before It Bursts: The Case of Tim Walz
Linvill traced the video back to a Russian propaganda operation, first identified by Clemson, that has also spread faked videos targeting Harris and her running mate Tim Walz in recent weeks.
“They’re fighting an uphill battle,” said Darren Linvill, co-director of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, which tracks election influence campaigns. “I’m sure that they often feel like they’re trying to put their finger in the dike before it bursts.”
The incident showed that the deck is stacked against voting officials, even more so than it was in 2020. The phony video was viewed hundreds of thousands of times shortly after it was posted. A statement from the county debunking it was only shared on X more than 100 times.
