Attempts delegitimize the election have widened to involve the use of misleading numbers and data. One of the more sophisticated examples of this strategy spreading online involves citation of “Benford’s Law”.

We look back at the set of misleading stories the EIP reviewed to identify which Twitter accounts consistently share false or misleading content about the upcoming election, and from where these accounts source this misleading information, and identified 43 cases. Across our dataset relating to these 43 incidents, more than 50% of all retweets can be traced back to “original” tweets from only 35 users (out of over 600K users in our dataset). We document how these users engaged in reframing, and decontextualization to spread misinformation.

We have identified several instances of apparently well-meaning but misleading content, which typically takes the form of flawed public-service announcements or calls to action. Such content that seeks to help but does harm is best characterized as well-intentioned misinformation: false or misleading information which — if it were not false — would be spread toward constructive ends. This post is motivated by the idea that by describing prototypical cases of well-intentioned misinformation, and by outlining best practices to contain its spread, we might reduce the threat it poses to the upcoming election.

When it comes to electoral misinformation stories heard from “a friend of a friend” can be dangerous vectors for spread. We find viral spread of these types of post and inconsistent platform policy responses.

As Americans begin to vote in person, we are seeing attacks emerge targeting the integrity of electronic voting machines. This narrative is not new in the 2020 cycle, in 2016 and 2018 it was weaponized by both foreign and domestic bad actors. In this post, we dive into three of these key narratives.

Two websites, Plain Truth Now (plaintruthnow.org) and Civil Rights International (civilrightsinternational.org), appear to be connected to each other. Both websites post a mix of content about Nigerian and US politics, and have cross-posted the same content, including a post with false claims about fraudulent voting.

Prominent conservative influencers have begun to spread a ‘color revolution’ narrative, which claims that protests (“riots”) and alleged ballot irregularities are evidence that the US is experiencing a deep-state backed color revolution. This is an example of preemptive de-legitimization of election results — it is a meta-narrative that provides a scaffolding on which any ballot or protest can be inflected as another example of a vast conspiracy to overthrow the President or steal the election.

Clickbait operators in the town of Veles in North Macedonia are running a number of websites that target conservative Americans with partisan content copied from American outlets. The websites are gaining significant traffic, especially from what appears to be the operators’ account on Parler, which is a major influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers. 

This post analyzes a recent case of false information around discarded ballots in order to explore the scope and impact of foreign intervention relative to domestic drivers — an important dynamic to understand, particularly as media coverage often disproportionately focuses on instances of foreign interference, which can unduly elevate the assumed influence of foreign adversaries

On Sunday night, a right-wing activist group, Project Veritas, released a video alleging illegal ballot harvesting in Minnesota. The video made several falsifiable claims that have either been debunked by subsequent reporting or are without any factual support. As the video calls into question the integrity of the election using misleading or inaccurate information, we determined this video to be a form of election disinformation. While we have reported our findings to the relevant online platforms, this video stands as an interesting example of what a domestic, coordinated elite disinformation campaign looks like in the United States. This post will explore the timeline of how the ideas in this video were initially seeded and then aggressively spread.