Election employees in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, usually are not destroying mail-in ballots solid for former President Donald Trump. The Defense Department final month did not challenge a directive giving American troopers unprecedented authority to make use of deadly power in opposition to Trump supporters who riot if the previous president loses subsequent week. And no, 180,000 Amish usually are not registered to vote in Pennsylvania, as solely 92,600 Amish stay within the state, together with minors. Ron DeSantis by no means stated Florida will not use Dominion voting machines in subsequent week’s election. And California municipalities usually are not permitting noncitizens to vote on this yr’s presidential election.
These are only a small instance of the circulate of voting-related misinformation narratives being seeded and unfold throughout social media platforms like X, Instagram and Facebook within the lead-up to November fifth.
The election denial motion has by no means gone away and is larger than ever.
In the weeks main as much as the 2020 vote, Trump and his allies had already begun spreading claims that the election was stolen, however these allegations had been obscure and disorganized. Over the previous 4 years, nonetheless, a well-funded community of election denial teams within the United States has labored tirelessly to mobilize their supporters and unfold conspiracy theories that voting machines solid votes in the dark, and votes are destroyed by full bag. and “mules” filling mailboxes with poll papers.
These conspiracy theories are shared by right-wing election denial networks, the Trump marketing campaign, and Russian propaganda teams. With per week left earlier than the historic vote, totally shaped conspiracy theories about threats to the vote are being pushed to a public that has been primed to consider all the pieces it hears.
Many of those narratives are spreading just about unchecked on social media platforms like X, Instagram, and Facebook; the place these in cost have all however abdicated their accountability to confirm details about one of the crucial vital votes in US historical past, and have additionally made it more durable for everybody else to see what is going on on.
“What considerations me most this yr is that now we have a way more opaque window into the penetration of those lies, irrespective of the place they arrive from,” Nina Jankowicz, the Biden administration’s former disinformation czar, who’s now CEO of ‘American Sunlight Project,’ tells WIRED. “Social media platforms have usually stopped moderating such content material and, equally worryingly, have minimize off researchers’ entry to the information streams that allowed us to objectively report on the scope of those campaigns, all attributable to political strain on disinformation researchers and social media. platforms.”
