Philadelphia’s ballot may be able to counter election lies

Philadelphia’s Mail-In Ballot Counting Machines Outruns Election Lythmia: A Tale of Two Dead Manes

The room where it happens has metal beams and harsh overhead lighting. The paper is moving through large belts near tall, human-sized cages with locks.

Though it resembles one, this is not a factory. It’s Philadelphia’s mail-in ballot-counting facility, where somewhere around 200,000 votes are expected to be tallied beginning on Election Day. The more misinformation that is out there, the worse it will be for the democratic process, as evidenced by the attack on the US Capitol four years ago.

Donald Trump or Vice President Harris could win the presidency if Pennsylvania electoral votes are used. Many of the state’s ballots have already been cast through the mail. Pennsylvania has laws that prohibit mail-in ballots from being processed before 7AM on Election Day. The result can be a serious delay in reporting election results — in 2020, The Associated Press didn’t call Pennsylvania as having been won by Joe Biden until four days after Election Day.

The tour is to inform voters that voting is safe, secure, and trustworthy. It is an attempt against false claims about the ballot being altered or destroyed to skew election results.

Lisa Deeley is the Democratic vice chair of the Philadelphia City Commissioners. Due to the covid-19 Psyvthumb, mail in voting was a popular option that year. But when conspiracies can ricochet across social media in seconds, every hour counts. She says that the more people hear something, the more likely they are to believe it.

There’s one final option on the table for ballot tallies: a hand count. In order to confirm that the machines are working correctly, samples of ballots can be audited by hand and compared to machine results. Pre election testing of equipment is done by the election officials. Georgia is one state where election skeptics have tried to force full hand counts of every ballot. That’s a recipe for failure.

Source: Can Philadelphia’s ballot counters outrun election lies?

The Philadelphia Project: Harassment, Security, and Robotics Against Election Misinformation: The Case Against Philadelphia in 2024

The eyes of the world are going to be on Philadelphia, a Republican city commissioner told reporters in a warehouse. “We are going to run the safest, most secure election in Philadelphia history.”

Each party selects election observers, who watch screens showing the ballot to make sure everything is fair. Finally, the ballots are sent into the locked storage area. They will be kept in long-term storage for the 22 months mandated by law in case of a recount.

The threats aren’t always amusing. According to Bluestein, he received antisemitic threats while the ballots were being counted. The harassment got so bad that Bluestein had police protection at his house the week of the election.

He says that the heat is down so far. Election officials are on high alert. An official in Arizona said security would be available to escort election workers to their cars. The state is also preparing for cutting-edge risks like infiltration by artificial intelligence scams, a scenario the staff roleplayed last year.

Bluestein is trying to spot false info on the internet. In one case, he debunked an allegation — shared on X by Musk — that a nonprofit offering services to low-income and houseless individuals harvested thousands of mail-in ballots from one address. The number of ballots was less than 150 in 2020.

His active role online is partially because he feels that social media platforms “are not doing as good a job as they did in 2020” with combating misinformation. Four years ago, platforms were on high alert for false claims, even if they often failed to enforce their policies effectively. In 2024, the situation is different. Under pressure from Trump and his allies to take a more hands-off role when it comes to election misinformation, many tech companies have relaxed the policies they had in place last time around. Both Meta and X took down rules against false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, as well as making it difficult for researchers to get data on emerging threats on their platforms.

Both Bluestein and Sabir said they haven’t yet seen the same level of harassment. Bluestein says broader misinformation claims are circulating, but he hasn’t found as many claims that single out specific officials or rank-and-file workers. Philadelphia had no problem in recruiting poll workers despite harassment in 2020. Everyone understands that there could be risks associated with it but they are all signing up to do the job.

Tensions that already exist can often be picked out by misinformation. Black Americans are at risk of being targeted by disenfranchisement efforts because of the misconception that their votes don’t count. Add to that and you have an idea about what I’m doing. Why am I wasting my time?”

The efforts will fail. In 2020, Trump lawyers and other allies brought numerous cases to change the election results after the fact. Those suits invariably fizzled, and some of the lawyers who filed them have been sanctioned or disbarred. “The analysis now seems to be, ‘Well, then let’s go directly for the votes themselves, and discredit certain kinds of voters and make it seem like certain people are voting that are not, so that we can then attack all votes.’”

A September Spotlight PA poll shows that 63 percent of respondents think votes would be counted fairly in the presidential race. But voters had far more confidence in how elections in their own counties would be administered — 78 percent expressed confidence in the results.

Organizers are seeing more people wanting to get involved in the process of democracy, and that participation can help quell election fears, says Susan Gobreski, president of the League of Women Voters of Philadelphia. While hearing about election skeptics getting involved in the process might raise some red flags, Gobreski says it’s important to remember that “most people are actually acting in good faith.”

Arming the public and the press with trustworthy information is a smart move, says Hinchey. She says that organizations and the press need to have a good understanding of how elections are functioning in Pennsylvania if they wish to be true to their word. Gobriewski encourages voters to question and be prepared to listen to the answers.

Pro-Trump Campaigners Against Election Deniers: Vem Robinson and the Turn of the Screw onto Pro-Theory Anti-Devils

Since the 2020 presidential election, Robinson has become something of a celebrity in MAGA world. She calls Laura Loomer a friend and says Roger Stone phones her to get the lowdown on breaking news. Her show, called Conspiracy Truths, was founded with Vem Miller, who was recently arrested at a Trump rally in possession of a shotgun and a handgun. There are few conspiracy theories Robinson, an actress with over 150 credits to her name on IMDB, doesn’t indulge in: In addition to believing the 2020 election was stolen, she also thinks most major school shootings are perpetrated by crisis actors, that shadowy organizations are implementing digital currencies to control the population, that COVID was released as a bioweapon, that COVID vaccines are untested and kill people, that January 6 was an inside job. She doesn’t think the moon landing happened.

The far-right groups that have been working around the clock to get these election deniers to vote have spent years building and buying an alternative reality. The groups are well-connected: The Election Integrity Network is run by former Trump adviser Cleta Mitchell, and True the Vote, a Texas-based group, was cofounded by election denial superstar Catherine Engelbrecht who has worked on dropbox monitoring and voter roll purge initiatives around the country for more than a decade. Election watchers have also been trained to listen to online calls from pro-Trump groups.

Robinson and thousands of other people are challenging election officials and spreading conspiracy theories online and in person ahead of the election. This weekend, election officials in California walked off the job because of the aggressive behavior of election observers, who were already at polling sites and voting tabulation centers.

Robinson told WIRED that he wanted to see if his ballot gets counted and he went ahead and voted. “I want to see it magically show up as counted. It’s the only fucking thing I can do at this point.”