Crowdsourced voting fraud claims could become grist for Republican lawsuits

As Election Day nears, social media is lighting up with users scouring for evidence of election fraud. Some of those unsubstantiated claims are poised to become grist for Republican lawsuits contesting results should former President Donald Trump lose.

One hub of these efforts is an "Election Integrity Community" on X, formerly Twitter, set up by owner Elon Musk's super PAC, that is inviting users to "share potential incidents of voter fraud or irregularities you see while voting in the 2024 election."

The feed is full of unverified claims and rumors. A video of a Republican poll watcher suggesting — incorrectly — that ineligible noncitizens can vote as long as they can present a driver's license got over a million views. Other users were suspicious when they were told by election workers to put their ballots into drop boxes, which have been a subject of baseless conspiracy theories since 2020. A surge of posts claimed that voting machines were flipping votes in Georgia and elsewhere, which both the Georgia secretary of state and the manufacturer have debunked.

"What we're seeing…is a kind of motivated misinterpretation where people [who are] skeptical already…of whether elections are trustworthy — they've been told by some of their favorite candidates in some cases, that we can't trust the results…if that candidate doesn't win," said Kate Starbird, professor at University of Washington and co-founder of its Center for an Informed Public, which is tracking election rumors.

Viral false claims could fuel lawsuits

While people also gathered alleged evidence of fraud during the 2020 election, those who may challenge the election results are more ready to leverage the material this time around, Starbird said.

"There are lawyers at the ready to go take these rumors, misperceptions, misinterpretations, convert those into affidavits on Election Day or the days following, and try to use that either to contest whether certain votes are counted in certain places… or to use that to try to pressure election officials and others not to certify results," Starbird said.

Researchers and election officials say that one of the most prominent narratives circulating this year is the unfounded claim that noncitizens are voting or that they are allowed to vote in federal elections, giving Democrats an unfair advantage in what is expected to be a very tight race.

That baseless narrative has emerged as the main focus of Republican efforts to lay the groundwork to challenge the election outcome if Trump loses, say election law experts. States have cited it as a justification to attempt to purge people from the rolls. Thousands of eligible voters were ensnared by such an effort in Alabama, according to court records. Eligible voters in Texas and Virginia have been removed too, although the total number affected isn't clear yet.

The votes of naturalized citizens aren't the only ones being challenged by baseless claims. The far-right outlet The Gateway Pundit alleged the methods that some members of the military and Americans living abroad used to vote are vulnerable to hacking, and accused Democrats of exploiting overseas ballots to invent votes.

Those rumors also arose in 2020 and were debunked. A video Gateway Pundit cited as evidence was actually part of an Iranian influence operation called out by the Justice Department in 2021.

But Trump has recently repeated the false claim on his Truth Social platform. Republicans have filed lawsuits challenging the legitimacy of some ballots cast by U.S. citizens living abroad, though those challenges have not been successful.

Misinterpreting real-life events, seeing routine work as fishy

Many other false narratives about voting are also being recycled from past years. Rumors alleging that voting machines made by Dominion Voting Systems were flipping votes spread on social media in recent days. That company was the target of conspiracy theories in 2020 that ultimately resulted in a $787 million defamation settlement by Fox News and multiple ongoing lawsuits.

The posts that accused the company claimed that the poster or a friend or relative were ultimately able to vote as they wanted when they noticed that the machine's printed out ballot didn't match their chosen candidate.

But even though voters were able to choose their preferred candidates, high-profile figures including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who has regularly echoed conspiratorial narratives, continued to amplify the accusation that Dominion machines might be changing votes.

In statements to NPR, Dominion Voting Systems said its machines were not changing any votes and pointed to a page on its website addressing common rumors about the company titled "Setting the Record Straight".

Other easily dispelled falsehoods have quickly gone viral. Republican activist Cliff Maloney, who organizes door knockers aiming to get Pennsylvanian Republicans to vote early, said that one of his contacts identified 53 voters registered at a monastery in Erie County where, the contact claimed, no one lived. The monastery — which in fact houses over 50 nuns — quickly put out a response correcting the claim, and CNN spoke with the sisters who were the listed registered voters.

But Maloney's response to being fact checked was to double down on his claim. "WRONG," he wrote on X. The site's owner, Musk, amplified Maloney's initial claim, but there's no indication that he also shared the fact checks.

Ignoring checks and remedies in place is another common theme of those trying to cast doubt on election results, University of Washington researchers wrote in a September blog post.

High tension inspires high vigilance

With both parties telling their supporters to vote early, concerns about ballot drop boxes have also resurfaced. Drop boxes in three states have been set on fire. Starbird noted that rumors are starting to circulate around the incidents, but she said they, as well as isolated incidents of stolen ballots, miss a larger point.

"This is really problematic for the individuals, but it's unlikely to change the results of the election," she said, noting that one of the rhetorical strategies of election deniers is to exaggerate the impact of events.

Starbird worries what constant vigilance about voter fraud is doing in a country steeped for years in Trump's false assertions that the election was stolen from him in 2020 — a worldview that has been embraced by many Republicans and that has dented many Americans' confidence in voting.

"At its best, what this can do is quickly identify problems so that election officials can solve them. And that's what we want," she said. "At its worst, what happens is these things get wrapped into these sort of false narratives, reinforce [them] and people begin to lose trust in the process."

And that, Starbird said, "can distract election workers and election officials from real problems."

Copyright 2024, NPR

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