Election Fraud Conspiracy Theories Are Already Thriving Online

Election workers in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, are not destroying mail-in ballots cast for former President Donald Trump. The Department of Defense did not issue a directive last month giving US soldiers unprecedented authority to use lethal force against Trump supporters who riot if the former president loses next week. And no, 180,000 Amish people did not register to vote in Pennsylvania—given there are only 92,600 Amish living in the state, including minors. Ron DeSantis never said that Florida would not use Dominion Voting machines in next week’s election. And municipalities in California are not allowing noncitizens to vote in this year’s presidential elections.

These are just a small sample of the flood of voting-related disinformation narratives that are being seeded and spread on social media platforms like X, Instagram, and Facebook in the build up to November 5.

The election denial movement never left, and it’s bigger than ever.

In the weeks before the 2020 vote, Trump and his allies had already begun to spread claims that the election would be stolen, but those allegations were vague and unorganized. Over the last four years, however, a well-funded network of election denial groups across the US have worked tirelessly to marshal their supporters and drum up conspiracy theories about voting machines flipping votes in the middle of the night, votes being shredded by the bagful, and “mules” stuffing drop boxes with ballots.

These conspiracy theories are being shared by right-wing election denial networks, the Trump campaign, and Russian propaganda groups. With a week left to go before the historic vote, fully-formed conspiracy theories about threats to voting are being pushed to audiences that have been primed to believe everything they hear.

Many of these narratives are spreading virtually unchecked on social media platforms like X, Instagram, and Facebook; where those in charge have all but abdicated their responsibility to fact check information around one of the most critical votes in US history—and have also made it harder for everyone else to see what is going on.

“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,” Nina Jankowicz, the former Biden administration disinformation czar, who is now CEO of the American Sunlight Project, tells WIRED. “Social media platforms have by and large stopped moderating such content, and just as worryingly, have cut off researcher access to data streams that allowed us to objectively report on the scale of these campaigns, all due to political pressure on disinformation researchers and social media platforms.”