How crowdsourcing allegations of voter fraud could influence the election: NPR

As Election Day approaches, more users are turning to social media to look for evidence of voter fraud. Some of these unsubstantiated claims could be breeding ground for Republican lawsuits challenging the results if former President Donald Trump loses.

A center of these efforts is an “Election Integrity Community” on “

The feed is full of unconfirmed claims and rumors. A video of a Republican poll watcher suggesting – falsely – that ineligible non-citizens can vote as long as they can produce a driver's license has been viewed over a million times. Other users were suspicious when poll workers told them to put their ballots in mailboxes, which have been the subject of baseless conspiracy theories since 2020. The Georgia Secretary of State and the manufacturer have debunked that.

“What we're seeing… is a kind of motivated misinterpretation by people [who are] “I'm already skeptical … about the credibility of elections – some of their favorite candidates have told them in some cases that we can't trust the results … if that candidate doesn't win,” said Kate Starbird, a University of Washington professor and co-founder his Center for an Informed Public, which tracks election rumors.

Viral false claims could fuel lawsuits

While suspected evidence of fraud was also collected in the 2020 election, those who might challenge the election results are more willing to use the material this time, Starbird said.

“There are lawyers who are willing to take these rumors, miscalculations and misinterpretations, turn them into affidavits on Election Day or the days following, and try to use them to either challenge whether certain votes are counted in certain places … or use them “to try to pressure election officials and others not to certify the results,” Starbird said.

Researchers and election officials say one of the most prominent narratives circulating this year is the baseless claim that non-citizens will be allowed to vote or vote in federal elections, giving Democrats an unfair advantage in what is expected to be a very close race.

That baseless narrative has become the main focus of Republicans' efforts to lay the groundwork to challenge the election results if Trump loses, election law experts say. States have cited this as justification for trying to remove people from the lists. According to court documents, thousands of voters in Alabama were caught up in such an operation. Eligible voters in Texas and Virginia have also been removed, although the total number affected is not yet clear.

It's not just the voices of naturalized citizens that are being called into question by unsubstantiated claims. Far-right media outlet The Gateway Pundit claimed that the methods some military personnel and Americans living abroad used to vote were vulnerable to hacking and accused Democrats of exploiting foreign ballots to fabricate elections.

These rumors also emerged in 2020 and were debunked. A video cited as evidence by Gateway Pundit was actually part of an Iranian influence operation ordered by the Justice Department in 2021.

But Trump recently repeated the false claim on his Truth Social platform. Republicans have filed lawsuits challenging the legitimacy of some ballots cast by U.S. citizens living abroad, but those challenges have been unsuccessful.

Misinterpreting events in real life, seeing routine work as lazy

Many other false narratives about voting are also being recycled from years past. Rumors have spread on social media in recent days that voting machines from Dominion Voting Systems would flip votes. This company was the target of conspiracy theories in 2020, which ultimately led to a $787 million defamation settlement from Fox News and several ongoing lawsuits.

The posts accusing the company claimed that the poster or a friend or relative was ultimately able to vote the way they wanted when they realized the machine's printed ballot didn't match the one of the candidates they had chosen.

But even as voters were able to select their preferred candidates, high-profile figures like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who regularly repeated conspiratorial narratives, continued to amplify allegations that Dominion machines could change votes.

In statements to NPR, Dominion Voting Systems said its machines did not change votes and pointed to a page on its website called “Setting the Record Straight” that addresses common rumors about the company.

A voter places a ballot in the ballot box at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center in Phoenix, Arizona on October 23, 2024. As both parties urge their supporters to vote early, concerns about the ballot box are resurfacing.

Olivier Touron/AFP via Getty Images

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Olivier Touron/AFP via Getty Images

Other easily dispelled falsehoods quickly went viral. Republican activist Cliff Maloney, who organizes door knockers to encourage Republicans in Pennsylvania to vote early, said one of his contacts identified 53 voters registered at what the contact claimed was a convent in Erie County , no one lived. The monastery — which actually houses over 50 nuns — quickly released a response correcting the claim, and CNN spoke with the sisters, who were listed as registered voters.

But Maloney's response to the fact-checking was to double down on his claim. “WRONG,” he wrote down

Ignoring existing controls and remedies is another common theme among those seeking to challenge election results, University of Washington researchers wrote in a September blog post.

High tension awakens high alertness

As both parties urge their supporters to vote early, concerns about the ballot box have also resurfaced. Mailboxes were set on fire in three states. Starbird noted that rumors about the incidents are beginning to circulate, but said they, like isolated incidents of stolen ballots, miss a larger point.

“This is really problematic for individuals, but it is unlikely to change the election results,” she said, noting that one of the rhetorical strategies of election deniers is to exaggerate the impact of events.

Starbird worries about the effect of constant vigilance against voter fraud in a country that has for years been steeped in Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him – a worldview adopted by many Republicans and the trust of many affected Americans in the election.

“In the best case scenario, this allows problems to be identified quickly so that election officials can resolve them. And that’s what we want,” she said. “The worst case scenario is that these things get caught up in these false narratives that become amplified [them] and people start to lose trust in the process.”

And that, says Starbird, “can distract poll workers and election officials from the real issues.”