These are the rumors and misinformation to watch for on Election Day

These are the rumors and misinformation to watch for on Election Day

By Kate Starbird & Nature magazine

This year’s US presidential race is unprecedented, with a last-minute switch in the Democratic Party nominee and assassination attempts targeting Republican Party nominee Donald Trump. As anxiety over the outcome grows and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election results persist, the stage is set for a period of intense rumors about voting and counting processes.

Using ongoing social media research conducted at the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington in Seattle, which I co-direct, my colleagues and I can identify in real time the rumors that are spreading both on Democratic online networks, as well as the republican ones. We can see how election rumors emerge as events unfold, and how they frequently combine first-hand accounts, such as photos or videos, with pre-existing narratives, for example that non-US citizens are voting in large numbers. Understanding how electoral events mesh with partisan tropes can make rumors more predictable (ES Spiro and K. Starbird Problems Sci. Tech. 39(3), 47–49; 2023). Here, we outline three types of rumors we expect election detractors to lean on as we get closer to polling day.

False accusations and conspiracy theories about widespread non-citizen voting are a major theme in this election. For example, I saw several video interviews with people on the street on social media platforms such as Tiktok and Instagram, which purportedly show non-citizens who admit they are registered, plan to vote or have voted. Some videos use selective editing and inaccurate subtitles to create a false impression. In other cases, interviewees admitted to giving wrong answers due to anxiety, for example not wanting a foreigner to know that they are not a citizen.

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I’ve seen this game manual before. In January 2016, shortly after taking office, then-President Trump claimed that the votes cast by three million to five million illegal immigrants it had cost him the popular vote. However, there is no evidence that large numbers of non-citizens are voting illegally in the United States. A 2016 study of 42 jurisdictions estimated that about 30 out of 23.5 million votes (0.0001%) were cast by non-citizens (see go.nature.com/3nuhdzo). But despite these extremely low numbers, the rumors are particularly persistent this year, aligned with a broader rise in anti-immigration rhetoric.

A second class of rumors concerns allegations of bias in the administration of elections. Due to the decentralized nature of US elections, it is possible for something to go wrong somewhere. And localized errors could be used to mislead by falsely attributing malicious intent to election officials, overlooking remedies or exaggerating the impact.

Registration forms or ballots may be mailed to the wrong person or address. A ballot design error can misspell a candidate’s name. For example, about 250 electronic ballots mailed to military and overseas voters in late September by Palm Beach County, Florida, misspelled Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz as “Tom Walz”. Although the error was quickly corrected, several Democratic-leaning social media users shared the story as an example of Republican manipulation.

In such cases, people often share photos, videos and first-person accounts, which can spread widely online. The Trump campaign and several partisan political organizations are training “election integrity” volunteers and creating reporting infrastructure — including through text messages and online forms — to collect evidence.

Such information could feed the rumor mills. Social media platforms are primed to facilitate the rapid spread of political rumors, including a whole theater of influencers working with their audiences to synthesize “evidence” to fit pre-existing narratives.

During the vote counting period, complaints of “suspicious” actors or objects may occur. For example, grainy photos might show a person running “suspicious equipment” up to a counting unit. Videos and eyewitness accounts could be posted of white vans apparently full of non-citizen voters’ ballots approaching a polling station. Each rumor helps build a larger story that something is wrong, that someone is cheating, and that the results cannot be trusted.

Such tactics have been widely applied to challenge the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election. In reality, the equipment in the worrying boxes turned out to be belong to a photographer from a local news station in Detroit, Michigan. The white vans were rents regularly used by election officials to transport the ballots from the polling stations to the counting centers.

For all these rumours, real footage turns into fake narratives. The people who stand on the side of truth and information integrity have an advantage this time: we’ve seen this scenario before. Researchers have a better understanding of the online dynamics surrounding these rumor processes—and we can quickly unravel them. Our team remains dedicated to providing conceptual frameworks and real-time analysis to help identify and resolve emerging rumors.

It is our hope that this information can assist election officials in preparing rapid response plans; journalists to better inform their audience; and citizens in recognizing false rumors and political manipulation.

This article is reproduced with permission and was published for the first time on October 22, 2024.