Election workers in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, are not engaged in the destruction of mail-in ballots cast for former President Donald Trump. The Department of Defense did not issue a directive last month granting US soldiers unprecedented authority to use lethal force against Trump supporters who might riot if the former president loses the upcoming election. Furthermore, it is inaccurate that 180,000 Amish people have registered to vote in Pennsylvania, as the state is home to only about 92,600 Amish individuals, including minors. Ron DeSantis did not state that Florida would avoid using Dominion Voting machines in the election next week. Moreover, municipalities in California are not permitting noncitizens to vote in this year’s presidential elections.
These examples represent a mere fraction of the voting-related disinformation narratives circulating on social media platforms such as X, Instagram, and Facebook in the lead-up to November 5. The movement denying election results has not disappeared; it has, in fact, grown larger.
In the weeks preceding the 2020 election, Trump and his allies had begun asserting that the election would be stolen, but those allegations lacked specificity and organization. Over the past four years, however, a well-funded network of election denial groups across the US has worked persistently to rally supporters and propagate conspiracy theories about voting machines altering votes overnight, votes being destroyed in large quantities, and “mules” stuffing drop boxes with ballots.
These conspiracy theories are disseminated by right-wing election denial networks, the Trump campaign, and Russian propaganda groups. With just a week remaining before the historic vote, fully-formed conspiracy theories about perceived threats to voting are being promoted to audiences predisposed to believe them.
Many of these narratives are spreading largely unchecked on social media platforms like X, Instagram, and Facebook, where those responsible for overseeing content have largely relinquished their duty to fact-check information around one of the most significant votes in US history. This has also hampered efforts to provide transparency about the dissemination of false information.
Nina Jankowicz, the former disinformation czar under the Biden administration and current CEO of the American Sunlight Project, expressed concern to WIRED: “What worries me most about this year is that we have a much more opaque window into the penetration of these lies, no matter where they come from.” Jankowicz noted that social media platforms have largely ceased moderating such content and, alarmingly, have restricted researcher access to data streams that allowed for objective reporting on these campaigns. This, she indicated, is due to political pressure on disinformation researchers and social media platforms.