By the time voting begins on Election Day, baseless claims of fraudulent votes had been accumulating on social media for months. stir up suspicion Regarding the fairness of elections.
Posts on X and other platforms have spiked, pointing to technical problems with voting machines, power outages, misspelled ballots and other problems as examples of a possible conspiracy afoot. Then, at 4:30 p.m. on Election Day, former President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that there was “a lot of talk about massive fraud” in Pennsylvania.There is no basis in fact.”
But as the votes were counted and it became clear that Trump was headed for a decisive victory, the flood of posts questioning the integrity of the election began to trickle down, researchers said. .
“I think this shows that these narratives are often imposed when they serve a purpose, and are often stage props for contesting unfavorable outcomes,” said Max Reid, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. ” he said. “And once you don’t need that setting or that statement anymore, it’s no longer imposed.”
the change was noticeable Elon Musk’s The Election Integrity Community, a group of about 65,000 people founded by the platform owner’s political action committee, encourages members to report “voting irregularities and irregularities.”
This group was already the following repository: speculation and unfounded rumors Before election day. Once voting began, hundreds of posts were shared an hour until early Wednesday morning, when Trump’s campaign convened in Pennsylvania, all but erasing Vice President Kamala Harris’ path to victory.
After that, posts decreased dramatically.
Reed’s team at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue also found that platform-wide mentions of voting machines in Pennsylvania and Michigan spiked Tuesday afternoon, but had mostly declined by Wednesday morning.
On Tuesday morning, a software error temporarily shut down voting machines in Cambria County, a county in southwestern Pennsylvania with a population of about 131,000 people. Voters used paper ballots and voting hours were extended by court order from 8pm to 10pm, but social media reports said the technical glitch was something nefarious and had been used in both previous elections. Some baselessly claimed that it was a conspiracy to throw out votes in counties that Trump won by large margins. Two elections.
Daniel Lee Thompson, director of research at the Center for Election Rumors at the University of Washington, said the story surrounding Pennsylvania’s voting machines is similar to the conversation surrounding election issues in Maricopa County, Arizona, in 2022. spoke. The ink was too faint for tabulators to read, so they were placed in a secure box and counted separately at state election headquarters. Alleges the error was intentionally provoked lawsuit He contested the results, which were later rejected.
“On Election Day, we always expect there will be fraud, glitches and problems at polling places,” Thompson said. “The question is whether these issues will be distorted into a larger narrative of election fraud occurring.”
Although the amount of rumors surrounding the election has decreased significantly, false claims about races that have not yet been called are still circulating. In Arizona, Republican Sen. Kari Lake is trailing Democratic candidate Ruben Gallego, but right-wing social users are pointing to the fact that Gallego had received more votes than Harris by Friday. has been used to cast doubt on the legitimacy of his lead.
Meanwhile, voter turnout figures are being distorted by both the left and the right to cast doubt on the election results. Millions of votes are still being counted, but some point to increased turnout in 2020 as evidence of 20 million “missing votes.” Some on the right argue this is proof that 2020 was stolen from Trump. Some on the left say this is grounds for a recount.
But the amount of posts questioning Harris’ defeat is nowhere near the amount of “Stop the Steal” efforts that followed Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election, according to Thompson and Reid’s research. It didn’t come close. Similar to the way Trump pushed to reject the election when he lost in 2020, no elected official questioned the outcome. Harris appealed to all Americans to accept the election results. concession speech on wednesday.
“A fundamental principle of American democracy is that even if you lose an election, you accept the outcome,” Harris said. “And anyone who seeks public trust must respect it.”
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