Election Day and After Live Updates
The Election Integrity Partnership will share rapid analysis and resources on election day and after. Check back for updates throughout the day!
[11/06/2020 12:10 AM PT] A thread on false claims circulating about dead people voting. These claims fit with several of the narratives we anticipated in our post on What to Expect after election day:
[11/06/2020 9:45 AM PT] Our team published a new Rapid Response post looking at how Benford’s Law has been misapplied to attempt to delegitimize election results:
Vote Data Patterns used to Delegitimize the Election Results
Armchair investigators during the election have already begun to argue that too many of the submitted vote totals begin with larger single digit numbers (7 or 8 for example), which is being spun as evidence of voter fraud. We caution against this conclusion. Having the distribution of leading digits stray from the expected percentages predicted by Benford’s Law can happen by chance, though it is more common when the law’s assumptions are violated, as they often are with vote tallies. Benford’s Law, and other math-based inquiries, can be used to detect voter fraud, but the vast majority of these violations are not conclusive evidence of fraud.
[11/06/2020 8:15 AM PT] Yesterday evening we shared another thread on twitter, this time on false claims that ballots had “non-radioactive” isotope watermarks. This is not true.
[11/05/2020 4:45 PM PT] A recording of our 2pm PT press briefing is now available.
[11/05/2020 12:25 PM PT] A thread on unverified claims of a postal worker re-dating envelopes in Michigan. This claim feeds into one of our anticipated post-election narratives: assembling “evidence” to fit false narratives of voter fraud. Read full thread on Twitter.
[11/05/2020 12:05 PM PT] In our latest rapid-response blog, we urge journalists to be cautious in how they frame politicians’ statements in their headlines.
Media Largely Frames Trump’s Victory Declaration as False in Headlines
The way the media frames misinformation plays a role in how the public interprets, remembers and ultimately believes the information. After President Donald Trump claimed victory during a press conference early this morning, media outlets faced the challenge of how to report it.
[11/05/2020 11:20 AM PT] What we’ve seen on allegations of found ballots:
[11/05/2020 10:00 AM PT] A tweet thread from our research desk on how to interpret vote count totals that may appear to “jump”:
[11/05/2020 9:45 AM PT] Yesterday evening we posted a thread on misunderstandings around the way the Michigan Elections Website posts elections results. This was further clarified this morning by the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office.
[11/04/2020 3:50 PM PT] A deeper dive into “SharpieGate”:
The below graph sows the total number of tweets (marked by type) that used the terms “sharpies,” “felt tip,” or “sharpiegate” since yesterday morning. Sizes of bubbles indicate number of followers (hover over for more details):
[11/04/2020 3:00 PM PT] Our brief look at why ballot counting takes time
[11/04/2020 1:00 PM PT] A breakdown on how to interpret seeming “spikes” in vote tallies:
[11/04/2020 11:40 AM PT] The trends: “#StopTheSteal” and “The Fix Is In.”
Despite diverging targets and no evidence of fraud, disparate narratives alleging electoral fraud have accumulated quickly on social media as vote counts have progressed. Many of these posts have included the vague phrases “#StopTheSteal” and “The Fix Is In”. The #StopTheSteal hashtag was first widely used the morning of election day, where a post including the phrase garnered over 25K retweets when shared alongside a video of a poll watcher wrongly barred from a polling station in Pennsylvania.
Since then, both #StopTheSteal and “The Fix Is In” have been reframed to target unrelated events in the posts of numerous widely followed users, including influencers @RealJamesWoods, @DiamondandSilk and @RichardGrenell. Given the growing popularity and malleability of both phrases, we expect them to continue to bolster delegitimizing narratives by tying together various disconnected and unfounded claims of fraud until official results are announced.
Use of the hashtag #StopTheSteal” and the phrase “Fix is In” on Twitter over the last 18 hours. #StopTheSteal grew dramatically as it was shared by influential twitter users.
[11/04/2020 10:25 AM PT] A recording is now available of this morning’s press biefing:
[11/04/2020 9:00 AM PT] Updates form our early morning shift:
[11/04/2020 8:50 AM PT] False narratives about ballot marking in Maricopa County, Arizona:
A video of voters outside a polling station in Maricopa County, AZ, in which they claim that poll workers forced them to use Sharpie markers on their ballot has spread on multiple platforms, including Twitter and TikTok. The video is being used to make allegations of an orchestrated attempt to invalidate and suppress votes as users state that the voter machines ‘register ONLY ink ballots’.
In fact, Maricopa County Elections Department’s Facebook page posted a video yesterday informing voters that they use Sharpie markers at Vote Centers so that the ink on ballots doesn’t smudge.
The original Tweet on the subject garnered over 1,000 engagements in 30 minutes before the account was removed by the platform. The video has since been re-uploaded by other Twitter users and featured in over 175 TikToks duets claiming that votes in the highly-contested Arizona race are not being counted.
[11/04/2020 8:45 AM PT] We will continue live updates today, renaming this page to “Election Day and After Live Updates.” Please join us at 9:30am PT for a briefing on our observations from the last 12 hours.
[11/03/2020 10:26 PM PT] Resurgence of innacurate claims around mail-in ballots in Miami-Dade County
[11/03/2020 10:30 PM PT] A reminder on a thread we saw late last week:
[11/03/2020 8:37 PM PT] Uncertainty regarding voter counts will encourage the spread of misinformation until final results are announced. A primary method for spreading misinformation involves the recontextualization of past events. Earlier today we observed this in real time in the form of a discussion on Twitter regarding a New Hampshire Election Official who was alleged to have been arrested for voting twice in the 2016 election. Although the underlying facts of the story are true, posts on Facebook and Twitter reframed the 2016 offense as if it had occurred during the 2020 election. Before we filed a report with the platforms, numerous posts using this misleading framing received thousands of likes. This narrative reiterates that even true information can be recontextualized to advance a misleading narrative. It is important to verify not only that information is true, but that it is recent and relevant, as we have previously detailed.
[11/03/2020 8:25PM PT] Exploiting uncertainty to delegitimize the electoral process.
[11/03/2020 7:30PM PT] Additional narratives about voting machines in Pennsylvania
[11/03/2020 6:45 PM PT] Fake Election Results Live Streams Trend Among Swing States
[11/03/2020 5:45 PM PT] A recording of our 4:30pm Briefing:
[11/03/2020 5:30 PM PT] We just published a new rapid response on “Weaponizing projections as tools of election delegitimization”
Forecasting elections is notoriously difficult. In 2016, several models expressed an all but certain Clinton victory. FiveThirtyEight was an exception among the more established forecasters, giving Trump a seemingly-generous 30%. In the wake of the 2016 election, Modellers and pollsters alike pointed fingers, and there has been no shortage of explanations for what went wrong uncovered through post-mortems. Of the many credible explanations, there was no evidence that voter fraud or illegal electoral misconduct was to blame.
[11/03/2020 4:55 PM PT] In response to a question on our live briefing, we have a graph of the use of “Stop the Steal” on Twitter:
[11/03/2020 2:45PM PT] Tracking rhetoric about expectations of violence
[11/03/2020 12:55 PM PT] Pennsylvania Polling Station Issues
Video showing a poll watcher being denied entrance to a Philadelphia polling site with over 300 million impressions on Twitter
Throughout election day, right-wing influencers and outlets have amplified content purporting to show widespread irregularities at polling stations in Pennsylvania.
One video, showing a poll worker being wrongfully barred from entering a polling center in Philadelphia, was posted on twitter at 6:19 AM and currently has over 278 million impressions on Twitter alone.
Amplification of these stories started with lesser-known blue-check accounts on Twitter and Facebook, and was quickly picked up by mainstream right-wing influencers including Steve Bannon, Donald Trump Jr., Diamond and Silk, and James Woods as well as influential right-wing media outlets including Breitbart and The Gateway Pundit.
The narrative was eventually amplified by NAEBC, an asset that is suspected of ties to the Russian Internet Research Agency that poses as a far-right American outlet.
Content was also used to drive calls for violence, with many commenters across platforms alluding to civil unrest, specifically gun violence against Democrats.
Throughout election day, right-wing influencers and outlets have amplified content purporting to show widespread irregularities at polling stations in Pennsylvania. The first video, showing a poll worker being wrongfully barred from entering a polling center in Philadelphia, was posted on twitter at 6:19 AM and already has over 278 million impressions on Twitter alone. As of now, they have all been loosely linked with hashtags alleging #VoterFraud by Democrats, but seem designed to foster a general sense of distrust of Pennsylvania results rather than any specific allegation. One such post claims that voters in Philadelphia are being split into lines based on their support for specific parties. Another falsely claims electioneering in the form of Democrat signage outside polling centers. A third claims voters in Trump gear are being expelled from polling stations as a consequence of their attire.
Amplification of these stories started with lesser-known blue-check accounts and quickly picked up by mainstream right-wing influencers including Steve Bannon, Donald Trump Jr., Diamond and Silk, and James Woods. Eventually the story was amplified by NAEBC, an asset that is suspected of ties to the Russian IRA posing as an American news site.
Issues with lines, ballot submission, and poll watcher verification are not unique to Pennsylvania and will likely continue to be reported given the number of active polling stations and voters mobilizing throughout the day.
False claims of electioneering at polling stations were amplified as part of this narrative.
[11/03/2020 12:00 PM PT] There have been reports of election technology malfunctions, particularly with electronic pollbooks, in several states. In Spalding County, Georgia, for instance, election officials reported that misconfigured poll books resulted in delays (which has since been resolved). Viral claims around these malfunctions allege that they are intentionally caused to achieve partisan ends. There is no evidence to suggest that any of these errors are malicious: election technology glitches happen, and we encourage voters to look to election officials before jumping to conclusions.
[11/03/2020 8:55 AM PT] A recording of our morning webinar is available online at this link.
[11/03/2020 8:20 AM PT] This morning we published a new post on how Russian-funded English language media outlets targeted at the United States have portrayed and amplified election fears:
Russian Narratives on Election Fraud
Russian influence operations and state-backed outlets have been amplifying claims of election fraud, vote rigging and Big Tech interference ahead of the U.S. presidential election. These efforts do not appear to have gained substantial traction, but they suggest a focus on events that serve to de-legitimize the process and outcome, especially in the event of a Democratic victory, that resembles the behavior of Russian influence operations in 2016.
[11/03/2020 8:00 AM PT] We are going live with our morning press briefing
Election Day and After Live Updates
The Election Integrity Partnership will share rapid analysis and resources on election day and after. Check back for updates throughout the day!
[11/06/2020 12:10 AM PT] A thread on false claims circulating about dead people voting. These claims fit with several of the narratives we anticipated in our post on What to Expect after election day:
[11/06/2020 9:45 AM PT] Our team published a new Rapid Response post looking at how Benford’s Law has been misapplied to attempt to delegitimize election results:
Vote Data Patterns used to Delegitimize the Election Results
Armchair investigators during the election have already begun to argue that too many of the submitted vote totals begin with larger single digit numbers (7 or 8 for example), which is being spun as evidence of voter fraud. We caution against this conclusion. Having the distribution of leading digits stray from the expected percentages predicted by Benford’s Law can happen by chance, though it is more common when the law’s assumptions are violated, as they often are with vote tallies. Benford’s Law, and other math-based inquiries, can be used to detect voter fraud, but the vast majority of these violations are not conclusive evidence of fraud.
[11/06/2020 8:15 AM PT] Yesterday evening we shared another thread on twitter, this time on false claims that ballots had “non-radioactive” isotope watermarks. This is not true.
[11/05/2020 4:45 PM PT] A recording of our 2pm PT press briefing is now available.
[11/05/2020 12:25 PM PT] A thread on unverified claims of a postal worker re-dating envelopes in Michigan. This claim feeds into one of our anticipated post-election narratives: assembling “evidence” to fit false narratives of voter fraud. Read full thread on Twitter.
[11/05/2020 12:05 PM PT] In our latest rapid-response blog, we urge journalists to be cautious in how they frame politicians’ statements in their headlines.
Media Largely Frames Trump’s Victory Declaration as False in Headlines
The way the media frames misinformation plays a role in how the public interprets, remembers and ultimately believes the information. After President Donald Trump claimed victory during a press conference early this morning, media outlets faced the challenge of how to report it.
[11/05/2020 11:20 AM PT] What we’ve seen on allegations of found ballots:
[11/05/2020 10:00 AM PT] A tweet thread from our research desk on how to interpret vote count totals that may appear to “jump”:
[11/05/2020 9:45 AM PT] Yesterday evening we posted a thread on misunderstandings around the way the Michigan Elections Website posts elections results. This was further clarified this morning by the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office.
[11/04/2020 3:50 PM PT] A deeper dive into “SharpieGate”:
The below graph sows the total number of tweets (marked by type) that used the terms “sharpies,” “felt tip,” or “sharpiegate” since yesterday morning. Sizes of bubbles indicate number of followers (hover over for more details):
[11/04/2020 3:00 PM PT] Our brief look at why ballot counting takes time
[11/04/2020 1:00 PM PT] A breakdown on how to interpret seeming “spikes” in vote tallies:
[11/04/2020 11:40 AM PT] The trends: “#StopTheSteal” and “The Fix Is In.”
Despite diverging targets and no evidence of fraud, disparate narratives alleging electoral fraud have accumulated quickly on social media as vote counts have progressed. Many of these posts have included the vague phrases “#StopTheSteal” and “The Fix Is In”. The #StopTheSteal hashtag was first widely used the morning of election day, where a post including the phrase garnered over 25K retweets when shared alongside a video of a poll watcher wrongly barred from a polling station in Pennsylvania.
Since then, both #StopTheSteal and “The Fix Is In” have been reframed to target unrelated events in the posts of numerous widely followed users, including influencers @RealJamesWoods, @DiamondandSilk and @RichardGrenell. Given the growing popularity and malleability of both phrases, we expect them to continue to bolster delegitimizing narratives by tying together various disconnected and unfounded claims of fraud until official results are announced.
Use of the hashtag #StopTheSteal” and the phrase “Fix is In” on Twitter over the last 18 hours. #StopTheSteal grew dramatically as it was shared by influential twitter users.
[11/04/2020 10:25 AM PT] A recording is now available of this morning’s press biefing:
[11/04/2020 9:00 AM PT] Updates form our early morning shift:
[11/04/2020 8:50 AM PT] False narratives about ballot marking in Maricopa County, Arizona:
A video of voters outside a polling station in Maricopa County, AZ, in which they claim that poll workers forced them to use Sharpie markers on their ballot has spread on multiple platforms, including Twitter and TikTok. The video is being used to make allegations of an orchestrated attempt to invalidate and suppress votes as users state that the voter machines ‘register ONLY ink ballots’.
In fact, Maricopa County Elections Department’s Facebook page posted a video yesterday informing voters that they use Sharpie markers at Vote Centers so that the ink on ballots doesn’t smudge.
The original Tweet on the subject garnered over 1,000 engagements in 30 minutes before the account was removed by the platform. The video has since been re-uploaded by other Twitter users and featured in over 175 TikToks duets claiming that votes in the highly-contested Arizona race are not being counted.
[11/04/2020 8:45 AM PT] We will continue live updates today, renaming this page to “Election Day and After Live Updates.” Please join us at 9:30am PT for a briefing on our observations from the last 12 hours.
[11/03/2020 10:26 PM PT] Resurgence of innacurate claims around mail-in ballots in Miami-Dade County
[11/03/2020 10:30 PM PT] A reminder on a thread we saw late last week:
[11/03/2020 8:37 PM PT] Uncertainty regarding voter counts will encourage the spread of misinformation until final results are announced. A primary method for spreading misinformation involves the recontextualization of past events. Earlier today we observed this in real time in the form of a discussion on Twitter regarding a New Hampshire Election Official who was alleged to have been arrested for voting twice in the 2016 election. Although the underlying facts of the story are true, posts on Facebook and Twitter reframed the 2016 offense as if it had occurred during the 2020 election. Before we filed a report with the platforms, numerous posts using this misleading framing received thousands of likes. This narrative reiterates that even true information can be recontextualized to advance a misleading narrative. It is important to verify not only that information is true, but that it is recent and relevant, as we have previously detailed.
[11/03/2020 8:25PM PT] Exploiting uncertainty to delegitimize the electoral process.
[11/03/2020 7:30PM PT] Additional narratives about voting machines in Pennsylvania
[11/03/2020 6:45 PM PT] Fake Election Results Live Streams Trend Among Swing States
[11/03/2020 5:45 PM PT] A recording of our 4:30pm Briefing:
[11/03/2020 5:30 PM PT] We just published a new rapid response on “Weaponizing projections as tools of election delegitimization”
Forecasting elections is notoriously difficult. In 2016, several models expressed an all but certain Clinton victory. FiveThirtyEight was an exception among the more established forecasters, giving Trump a seemingly-generous 30%. In the wake of the 2016 election, Modellers and pollsters alike pointed fingers, and there has been no shortage of explanations for what went wrong uncovered through post-mortems. Of the many credible explanations, there was no evidence that voter fraud or illegal electoral misconduct was to blame.
[11/03/2020 4:55 PM PT] In response to a question on our live briefing, we have a graph of the use of “Stop the Steal” on Twitter:
[11/03/2020 2:45PM PT] Tracking rhetoric about expectations of violence
[11/03/2020 12:55 PM PT] Pennsylvania Polling Station Issues
Video showing a poll watcher being denied entrance to a Philadelphia polling site with over 300 million impressions on Twitter
Throughout election day, right-wing influencers and outlets have amplified content purporting to show widespread irregularities at polling stations in Pennsylvania.
One video, showing a poll worker being wrongfully barred from entering a polling center in Philadelphia, was posted on twitter at 6:19 AM and currently has over 278 million impressions on Twitter alone.
Amplification of these stories started with lesser-known blue-check accounts on Twitter and Facebook, and was quickly picked up by mainstream right-wing influencers including Steve Bannon, Donald Trump Jr., Diamond and Silk, and James Woods as well as influential right-wing media outlets including Breitbart and The Gateway Pundit.
The narrative was eventually amplified by NAEBC, an asset that is suspected of ties to the Russian Internet Research Agency that poses as a far-right American outlet.
Content was also used to drive calls for violence, with many commenters across platforms alluding to civil unrest, specifically gun violence against Democrats.
Throughout election day, right-wing influencers and outlets have amplified content purporting to show widespread irregularities at polling stations in Pennsylvania. The first video, showing a poll worker being wrongfully barred from entering a polling center in Philadelphia, was posted on twitter at 6:19 AM and already has over 278 million impressions on Twitter alone. As of now, they have all been loosely linked with hashtags alleging #VoterFraud by Democrats, but seem designed to foster a general sense of distrust of Pennsylvania results rather than any specific allegation. One such post claims that voters in Philadelphia are being split into lines based on their support for specific parties. Another falsely claims electioneering in the form of Democrat signage outside polling centers. A third claims voters in Trump gear are being expelled from polling stations as a consequence of their attire.
Amplification of these stories started with lesser-known blue-check accounts and quickly picked up by mainstream right-wing influencers including Steve Bannon, Donald Trump Jr., Diamond and Silk, and James Woods. Eventually the story was amplified by NAEBC, an asset that is suspected of ties to the Russian IRA posing as an American news site.
Issues with lines, ballot submission, and poll watcher verification are not unique to Pennsylvania and will likely continue to be reported given the number of active polling stations and voters mobilizing throughout the day.
False claims of electioneering at polling stations were amplified as part of this narrative.
[11/03/2020 12:00 PM PT] There have been reports of election technology malfunctions, particularly with electronic pollbooks, in several states. In Spalding County, Georgia, for instance, election officials reported that misconfigured poll books resulted in delays (which has since been resolved). Viral claims around these malfunctions allege that they are intentionally caused to achieve partisan ends. There is no evidence to suggest that any of these errors are malicious: election technology glitches happen, and we encourage voters to look to election officials before jumping to conclusions.
[11/03/2020 8:55 AM PT] A recording of our morning webinar is available online at this link.
[11/03/2020 8:20 AM PT] This morning we published a new post on how Russian-funded English language media outlets targeted at the United States have portrayed and amplified election fears:
Russian Narratives on Election Fraud
Russian influence operations and state-backed outlets have been amplifying claims of election fraud, vote rigging and Big Tech interference ahead of the U.S. presidential election. These efforts do not appear to have gained substantial traction, but they suggest a focus on events that serve to de-legitimize the process and outcome, especially in the event of a Democratic victory, that resembles the behavior of Russian influence operations in 2016.
[11/03/2020 8:00 AM PT] We are going live with our morning press briefing