🧵Like 2020, we’re seeing images & videos of graphs misrepresenting common variations in how votes are counted & visualized. As vote count claims spread on Twitter, Telegram & alt platforms, note that they can be misleading. We recommend looking at many news sites & not just one These misleading claims appear to originate from Mike Lindell’s widely shared livestream. Lindell is a popular right-wing influencer, who has a history of using supposed statistical and technical evidence to allege election fraud in the 2020 election. washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/…

🧵 We have been tracking a rumor that Detroit voters were told they had already voted when they arrived at polling stations on Election Day. This claim has been fact-checked as a data error by @PolitiFact:
factcheck.org/2022/11/harmle… In a video from this morning, Detroit newsman Charlie Langton claimed some voters had been falsely told they’d already voted absentee when they arrived at the polls. Langton said election officials were working on a fix but highlighted that eligible voters would be able to vote

🧵We are tracking ongoing rumors surrounding printers in Maricopa County, Arizona suggesting that ballots are being printed in a way that may not be readable by ballot scanners. Tweets reporting this issue arose in the morning of November 8. As of right now the most retweeted claim of this narrative is a tweet by Tyler Bowyer, the chief operating officer at conservative activist organization Turning Point USA.

🧵We’re tracking another emerging conversation around real issues with printers running out of paper in Luzerne County, PA. wnep.com/article/news/l… Spread on Twitter is still relatively low (~10,000 related tweets). There are also several prominent posts of Facebook which are receiving significant engagement, including comment posts.

🧵Maricopa County, AZ election officials have released a statement this morning addressing issues with some of the tabulators on voting machines in the state.

https://twitter.com/MaricopaVote/status/1590009384377384961?s=20&t=Vyby6frS7LtdSoWMeg7Jkw

In a video posted on Twitter this morning, an election worker informed a long line of voters outside an Anthem, AZ polling location that one of their two tabulators is not working, with the other scanning at a 75% success rate.

🧵We are tracking responses to Monday morning’s U.S. Department of Justice announcement of the municipalities to which the Civil Rights division will send monitors. justice.gov/opa/pr/justice… The Justice Department has sent election monitors to voting sites to ensure compliance with federal voting laws since the 1960s, including in 2020 under the Trump administration. justice.gov/opa/pr/justice…

🧵In late October, concerns and accusations of voter intimidation increased dramatically, driven primarily by responses to people watching ballot drop boxes in Arizona. Our @EI_Partnership analysis shows how conspiracy theories surrounding “ballot mules” motivated drop box watchers, some of whose actions were subsequently interpreted as evidence of voter intimidation. eipartnership.net/blog/conspirac…

🧵A recent story about a voter arrested for attempting to tamper with voting equipment by inserting a USB drive into a voting machine during the Colorado primary in June is spreading with a misleading framing that it represents a broad trend of voter fraud by Democrats. The core claim — that a man was arrested for attempting to tamper with voting machines — is true. However, according to officials, no election data were accessed, and the incident did not disrupt voting.

🧵President Biden and several state officials have reminded voters in recent days that the midterm election results will likely not be available across all states on Election Day. 🧵 While these delays are common and expected, our ongoing analysis shows that these delays are being used by several actors online as “evidence” of pending fraud.

🧵Today, we identified another “incident” based on (real) challenges emerging from ballot paper shortages. The incident involves the misleading framing of a news article from ABC News that covers potential impacts from paper shortages during the midterm elections.🧵 On Twitter, Charlie Kirk, the founder and president of Turning Point USA, tweeted a quote from the ABC article, implying that coverage of the potential issue was designed to set a “narrative” that could then be blamed on COVID.

🧵Have social media platforms changed their election policies since 2020? Are those policies clear? We examined platform policies for clarity around potential U.S. election issues, looking at major platforms and alt-platforms.🧵 Most retained or improved on strong policies, but all have opportunities for improvement. Let’s take a closer look …

A Russian state media (RT) journalist recently spread false/misleading claims about U.S. elections via Twitter. Her tweets aimed to provide legitimacy for the Russian-run referendum to annex occupied regions in Ukraine, while also delegitimizing U.S. democratic processes. To delegitimize U.S. processes, the RT journalist referenced several false, unfounded, or exaggerated claims about U.S. elections, including that voting machines are easily hacked, do not have audits, and lack chain-of-custody processes.

At long last, the @2020Partnership is excited to release “The Long Fuse: Misinformation and the 2020 Election,” the culmination of months of work among approximately 120 people working across 4 organizations: @stanfordio @uwcip @Grapika_NYC and @DFRLab
eipartnership.net/report We had 3 primary goals: 1. Identify mis- and disinformation before it went viral and during viral outbreaks; 2. Share clear, accurate counter messaging; and 3. Increase understanding of the dynamics shaping the information space during the 2020 US election and its aftermath.

1/ Earlier this week Steve Cortes, a senior advisor to the Trump campaign, posted a series of four videos and an op-ed in which he claims to have uncovered statistical evidence that delegitimizes Biden’s win. These claims are based on recycled, debunked disinformation. 2/ His first argument is that Wisconsin’s turnout was improbably high. This was debunked on November 5th. The number cited (>90%) was incorrect. Actual turnout was 72.3%, based on the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot.

https://twitter.com/USATODAY/status/1324853896720928769

False claims have been circulating that Dominion Voting Systems is responsible for widespread election errors. There is no evidence to support these claims, which use isolated incidents to allege malfeasance. Voting across the country remains a secure and auditable process. (1/5) In Antrim County, MI, an error resulted in wrongly reported election results which were quickly corrected. As stated by the Michigan Secretary of State, the error was a result of “user human error” and not a software glitch. (2/5)

michigan.gov/som/0,4669,7-1…

A range of reports discuss Latino communities as being “targeted” by election disinformation which contradicts our observations.

Una variedad de reportes discuten las comunidades latinas como “objetivo” de desinformación electoral, lo que contradice nuestras observaciones. Most false narratives we've seen are not new but translations of existing narratives into Spanish or Portuguese.

La mayoría de las narrativas falsas que hemos observado no son nuevas, sino traducciones de narrativas existentes en español o portugués.

1/ I see dead voters? Not quite. 🤔

As the ballot count drags on, a series of unfounded narratives have proliferated on social media platforms. A recent viral allegation about dead or implausibly old voters in battleground states has gained traction. 2/ These posts typically share screenshots of Secretary of State voter rolls side-by-side with the birthdate of the alleged voter to prove that their vote was counted, despite the improbability that a voter could still be alive if they were born well-over a century ago.

We have observed false claims that “real” ballots have so-called “non-radioactive” isotope watermarks on them. Watermarks can be on mail-in ballots, but that does not mean they are used to target voters maliciously or as a method to conduct election fraud. [1/6] Depending on which state you voted in, your ballot may have a watermark. Ballots are printed with watermarks to help with authentication. Watermarks distinguish official ballots from potentially counterfeit ballots. [2/6] sos.ca.gov/administration…

1/ A new Project Veritas video is spreading on social media with an alleged whistleblower from Traverse City, Michigan. There is no evidence to support the claims made in the video. Elections and the vote counting process in Michigan continue to be safe and secure. 2/ The video features a “whistleblower” purported to work at the Barlow Branch USPS in Traverse City. He claims that the morning of 11/4, he and colleagues received a directive from a supervisor to postmark ballots with the previous date, 11/3. This remains unverified.

1/ Last week, we predicted we'd see “premature declarations of victory.” This prediction came true in Trump’s press conference on Tue night, when he falsely claimed he won the election. We look at which breaking news headlines covered his claim accurately
eipartnership.net/rapid-response… 2/ To understand how this claim of victory was framed by media, our research team analyzed headlines from breaking news stories that mentioned the claim in the hour after the press conference.

1/ According to @washingtonpost, many of the 300k ballots w/no delivery scan from USPS were most likely pulled by hand for expedited delivery & delivered without a scan. Those ballots would be unlikely to flip state-level results, even if missing.
washingtonpost.com/business/2020/… 2/ Tweets alleging that the ballots can sway election results are false.

The number of untracked ballots is less than the remaining margins in all outstanding races: even if all of those ballots were missing and were for the trailing candidate, they wouldn’t make a difference.