There are election fraud conspiracy theories that are flourishing online

The Foreign and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (Density of Voting in Swee States)

The network of accounts was not able to say who it was managed by. Influence operations run by foreign governments are known to amplify domestic tensions to drive up tension and chaos in the U.S.

The accounts may have received algorithmic amplification from X. An ISD researcher received a push notification from X about one of the posts, even though the researcher did not follow the account. The posts have also circulated on the Telegram messaging app, where they have been promoted by accounts that share Russian propaganda, and the message board 4chan, ISD said.

One sign that accounts may be coordinated is that many of the posts shared identical language and images. The phrase is “Democrats had it coming for not enforcing voter ID laws.” Republicans in many states have long pushed for stricter voter ID laws.

Many of the accounts that were identified boasted of voting for Trump in swing states, even though the baseless claims about overseas voting frame the president as a victim of illegal votes cast for Harris.

The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act allows states to set up systems to allow military members and American citizens living overseas to vote. The allegations surrounding the law are part of a larger narrative that the election will be stolen from Trump through a combination of lax voting laws and the possibility that noncitizens will illegally vote in large numbers and swing the very tight presidential race.

The network’s first post was published in October after Republicans filed lawsuits challenging overseas voters’ balloting in some swing states. There are questions about the eligibility of some overseas voters. Trump falsely claimed in a social media post in September that Democrats intended to use overseas ballots to “CHEAT” and manipulate the election results. The lawsuits have not found success in the courts.

According to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, there is a network of accounts on the social media site called “X” that claim to be foreign nationals who voted illegally in the presidential election.

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 mentioned that Florida would not use voting machines. And municipalities in California are not allowing noncitizens to vote in this year’s presidential elections.

In 2020, major social media platforms proactively boosted election officials as authoritative sources of information, made misleading posts about voting less visible, and added warning labels to false claims. Now, Musk has cut most of X’s team policing the platform and removed many guardrails against false and misleading content.

“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. The researcher’s access to data streams was cut off due to political pressure on social media platforms, which made us report on the scale of these campaigns in a more objective way.

They’d come up with a new conspiracy theory every six months. It would be debunked. They’d have egg on their face. Adams said that they return to their hole for six months. You only get a limited number of bites at that apple.

Election officials face an uphill battle to fight election lies: How social media has broken the trust of voters in a closed election and how political they’ve responded

Election officials say that they control what they can in the face of that landscape. They have spent a lot of time talking to skeptical voters over the past four years, and now they hope work will make a difference in people’s willingness to accept election results.

He mentioned that if an election official uses an artificial intelligence image of a ballot box, it would be devastating. I think that kind of imagery can cause violence in a close election and again undermine Americans trust in our system.

X is the most obvious example, but other platforms have retreated from a more aggressive stance they took in 2020 and are more discreet about their work. Meta now lets Facebook and Instagram users opt out of some features of its fact-checking program, while its text-based social network, Threads, has deemphasized news and politics.

“We try to not commit unforced errors,” said Stephen Richer, the Republican recorder in Maricopa County, Ariz., who has been an outspoken debunker of election lies. “But at the end of the day, if somebody really wants to make something look weird, I think they can do it, unfortunately.”

Cramer, the election official in South Carolina, said one challenge for local governments dealing with false information online is how splintered the internet is. He’s recently started seeing a lot more wrong voting information on NextDoor, for instance.

“If you see something seemingly suspicious, and then you take a picture of it and post it online, that can be decontextualized so quickly and not take into account all of the various remedies or the fact that there’s nothing suspicious there at all,” she said.

Source: Voting officials face ‘an uphill battle’ to fight election lies

Campaigning against false rumors about the election: The case of Musk, Makhija, a child’s book, and an educator’s voice

Danielle Lee Tomson said the evidence generation infrastructure is more robust this year. She said that even when these efforts identify real problems with voting, they tend to ignore the checks in the system that catch problems.

Musk has lashed out at officials trying to correct his false claims. The Secretary of State in Michigan says that she received threats after she fact- checked Musk’s claim that the state has more registered voters than eligible citizens.

Musk has become a major vector for baseless claims that Democrats are bringing in immigrants to illegally vote for them — a conspiracy theory Trump and other Republicans have embraced and are using to lay the groundwork to claim the election was stolen should he lose.

A major communications platform is in the hands of one of the most vocal voices that has been elevating false rumors about the election. Musk took control of the site a couple of years ago and has made it a platform for people to support the president.

Neil Makhija baked ice cream for a voting ice cream truck to help people vote in Montgomery County, Pa. Cramer, in Charleston County, co-wrote a children’s book. An app was developed by a man in Durham County, N.C., to deliver accurate election information to people there.

Carolina Lopez, a former election official in Miami-Dade County, Fla. says trying to fight fire with fire on social media has felt like a losing battle for years now.

Warner told NPR that the stakes for our democracy were nothing less than what the government needed to get out quickly.

Last month, Warner wrote an open letter urging CISA to do more to help state and local governments identify and respond to election misinformation and disinformation campaigns, and to coordinate communications between the government, tech companies and researchers.

It’s important for us to get the message out there first, and be as proactive as possible, said Cramer who runs elections in Charleston County, S.C.

Local election officials are trying to get the attention of the media and the public on their processes. State election officials in a number of swing states have started holding multiple press conferences per week leading up to Nov. 5.

“What we are really trying to encourage them to do is to know that it is your state and local election official that is the signal through that noise,” Conley said.

officials say that so far, there is no sign that the election system has been penetrated by foreign adversaries. Attacks don’t have to undermine confidence in order, according to the election security expert.

DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI have issued joint public service announcements alerting Americans to tactics foreign actors might use to discredit the election, including ransomware attacks or falsely claiming to have hacked voter registration systems.

In September, the Justice Department seized web domains it says Russian operatives used to spoof American news outlets and spread fake stories, indicted employees of Kremlin-backed broadcaster RT in a scheme to fund right-wing pro-Trump American influencers, and brought criminal charges against Iranian hackers accused of targeting the Trump campaign.

The video is a fake. The ballots shown are not the same as what the county uses to vote. U.S. officials said it was created and spread by Russia to sow doubt in the election.

Source: Voting officials face ‘an uphill battle’ to fight election lies

The Real Truth about Election Frauds: Sen. Mark Warner and the emergence of fake images, audio, and text during a rally in Michigan

“Our adversaries know that misinformation and disinformation is cheap and effective,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, in an interview with NPR.

America’s geopolitical adversaries — particularly Russia, Iran and China — are expected to seize on election fraud claims, however unfounded, and generate their own material undermining the results, as part of their larger goals to sow chaos and discredit democracy.

Federal intelligence and law enforcement officials are taking a more aggressive approach this year in calling out foreign meddling. The change in attitude of the adminstration about the full scope ofRUSSIAn efforts favoring Trump is very different from the attitude of the administration before the election.

The officials charged with safeguards voting say they have learned a lot from the past two years and are facing new challenges this year, among which is the emergence of fake images, video, audio and text.

I will tell you what it is if I lose. Because they cheat. That’s the only way we’re gonna lose, because they cheat,” Trump said at a September rally in Michigan.

Perhaps the biggest factor is former President Donald Trump, who continues to falsely assert he won the 2020 election, despite courts and investigations finding no evidence of fraud. He has already set the stage to reject the results should he lose again this year.

Source: Voting officials face ‘an uphill battle’ to fight election lies

An Observation of a Russian Candidate Using a Tachyon in a Low-Redshift Town: The Detection of the Video and a Communication with a State Representative

The video was part of a Russian propaganda operation that has also been behind faked videos targeting Harris and her running mate Tim Walz.

They’re fighting an uphill battle, and they have a long way to go, according to the co- director of the media forensics hub. I’m sure that they feel like they are trying to put their finger into the dike before it explodes.

The incident showed that the deck is against voting officials more than ever before, and it will only get worse in the future. The phony video was viewed hundreds of thousands of times shortly after it was posted. Three hours after it was debunked, a statement from the county was only shared 100 times.