Election workers combat conspiracy theories amid high voter turnout

According to the Bexar County Board of Elections, nearly 37,000 voters cast ballots across Bexar County on Wednesday.

Nearly 95,000 voters have cast their ballots since early voting began on Monday. Early voting ends on Wednesday at 6:00 p.m. and reopens on Thursday at 8:00 a.m. Early voting ends November 1st.

ATLANTA (AP) — Voting machines that flip votes. More voters were registered than those eligible to vote. Large numbers of non-citizens voted.

With less than two weeks to go before Election Day, a resurgence in conspiracy theories and misinformation about elections is forcing state and local election officials to spend their time debunking rumors and explaining how elections work, all while monitoring and preparing for early voting November 5th.

“The truth is boring, facts are boring and outrage is really interesting,” said Utah Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson, a Republican who oversees elections in her state. “It's like experimenting with the truth. But we’re just trying to get as much information out to the public as possible.”

This year's election is the first presidential contest since former President Donald Trump began spreading lies about widespread voter fraud that cost him re-election in 2020. The false claims he continues to repeat have undermined public trust in elections and the people who oversee them among a broad swath of Republican voters. Investigations four years ago found no widespread fraud or tampering with voting machines, and each of the battleground states where Trump contested his loss has affirmed Democrat Joe Biden's victory.

Last week, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed a voting machine altered a voter's ballot in her Georgia precinct during early voting, and Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of the social media platform Voting machines spread and voter fraud both online and at a pro-Trump rally in Pennsylvania.

The floodgates are “very open,” said David Becker, a former U.S. Justice Department lawyer who now runs the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonpartisan group that works with state and local election officials.

“That makes life much more difficult for election workers,” he said.

Eric Olsen, who oversees elections in Prince William County, Virginia, said combating misinformation has become an important and challenging part of the job.

“It's really difficult from where we are, often because social media feels like a huge wave coming at you and we're in a little canoe with a paddle,” he said. “But we have to do this work.”

During the campaign, Trump repeatedly tried to sow doubt about the upcoming election – something he had already done in the run-up to his two previous runs for the White House. Even after his victory in 2016, he claimed he lost the popular vote due to a flood of illegal votes and formed a presidential advisory commission to investigate it. The commission dissolved without finding widespread fraud.

This year, Trump claims Democrats will cheat again and is using “Too Big to Rig” as a rallying cry to encourage his supporters to vote. Election experts see this as the basis for a renewed challenge to the election if he loses.

Spreading false allegations about elections has other consequences. It has already led to a wave of harassment, threats and turnover of election workers, as well as the violent attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The conspiracy theories that have emerged in recent weeks are not new. Allegations of “vote flipping” have long existed, with the most recent emerging in Georgia and Tennessee.

A claim in Whitfield County, Georgia was highlighted by Greene on Alex Jones' “InfoWars” show. Jones has a history of spreading falsehoods and was ordered to pay $1.5 billion for his false claims that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a hoax.

County election officials issued a statement noting that the case involved one voter out of 6,000 ballots cast since early voting began. The ballot was invalidated and the voter cast a replacement, which was counted. Officials said there was no problem with the voting machine.

Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer of Georgia's Secretary of State, said every report they've seen so far of someone saying their printed ballot didn't match their selection on the touchscreen voting machine was the result of voter error.

“There is no evidence that a machine flipped an individual’s voice,” he said. “Are there older people whose hands are shaking and who probably easily pressed the wrong button and didn't check their ballot properly before printing it out? This is the main situation we saw. There is literally zero – and I say this to some members of Congress in this state – zero evidence that machines are flipping votes. This claim was a lie in 2020, and it is a lie now.”

In Shelby County, Tennessee, county election officials said human error was to blame for the reports of altered votes. Officials said voters used their fingers instead of a stylus to mark their choices on voting machines.

In Washington state, Republican Jerrod Sessler, who is running for the state's 4th Congressional District seat, shared a video on social media this week purporting to show how easily fraudulent ballots can be created. However, the video did not make it clear that voter information on each ballot is matched to the state's voter list.

“A ballot returned with fraudulent voter registration information would not be counted and is illegal in Washington state,” Charlie Boisner, a spokesman for the State Department, said in an email.

Musk recently cited Dominion Voting Systems during remarks at a rally in Pennsylvania, appearing to suggest that its equipment was untrustworthy. Dominion has been at the center of conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election and last year settled its defamation lawsuit against Fox News for $787 million over repeated false claims on the network. The judge in the case said it was “crystal clear” that none of the claims made by Trump allies on the network were true.

In a statement, Dominion said it was “closely monitoring the claims surrounding the November 2024 election” and was “fully prepared to defend our company and our customers against lies and those who spread them.”

A request for comment from Musk was not immediately returned.

Musk, who has supported Trump, has repeatedly spread misinformation about election fraud to his 200 million followers on the X platform, where false information spreads largely unchecked.

He has often argued online with Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. The two recently clashed over Musk's claim that there were more registered voters than eligible voters in Michigan, a presidential battleground state. Benson said Musk was including in his count inactive voters who were scheduled to be removed. A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee alleging problems with the state's voter rolls.

During an interview last month, Benson said she was disheartened that someone in Musk's position was repeating false information.

“If he was genuinely committed, as he says, to giving people access to information, then I would hope that he would reinforce, rather than just reinforce, the truthful information — the factual, accurate information — about the security of our elections “He is amplifying conspiracy theories and directing the ire of many of his supporters toward us as individual election administrators,” Benson said. “It’s something we didn’t have to deal with in 2020 that represents a new front and challenge for us.”

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Fernando reported from Chicago. Associated Press writers Kate Brumback in Atlanta and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed to this report.

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