Election officials in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, have not destroyed mail-in ballots cast for former President Donald Trump. The Pentagon last month did not issue a directive giving U.S. soldiers unprecedented authority to use deadly force against rioting Trump supporters if the former president loses next week. And no, 180,000 Amish were not registered to vote, considering there are only 92,600 Amish living in Pennsylvania, including minors. Ron DeSantis never said Florida wouldn’t use Dominion voting machines in next week’s election. Additionally, California municipalities are not allowing non-citizens to vote in this year’s presidential election.
These are just some of the floods of voting-related misinformation being seeded and spread on social media platforms like X, Instagram, and Facebook leading up to November 5th.
The anti-election movement is never going away and is bigger than ever.
Weeks before the 2020 vote, Trump and his allies had already begun spreading claims that the election would be stolen, but those claims were vague and unorganized. But over the past four years, a network of well-funded election denial groups across the country has rallied supporters to spin conspiracy theories that voting machines are flipping votes and bags of votes are being shredded in the middle of the night. I have worked tirelessly to fabricate it. , and a “mule” stuffs the ballot into a drop box.
These conspiracy theories are shared by right-wing election denial networks, the Trump campaign, and Russian propaganda groups. With one week left until the historic vote, fully formed conspiracy theories about threats to the vote are being pushed onto audiences primed to believe everything they hear.
Many of these stories are spread virtually unchecked on social media platforms such as X, Instagram, and Facebook. Those in charge have largely abdicated their responsibility to fact-check information about one of the most important votes in American history, and they’re also making it difficult for everyone else to understand what’s going on.
“What worries me most about this year is that the window for these lies to seep in, no matter where they come from, has become even more opaque,” said former Biden administration disinformation czar and current said Nina Jankowitz, CEO of American Sunlight. Project told WIRED. “Social media platforms have generally stopped moderating such content, and equally worryingly, researchers have lost access to data streams that would allow them to objectively report on the scale of these campaigns. This is all because of disinformation researchers and political pressure on social media platforms. ”
