Election rumors and misinformation could spread more rapidly in the coming weeks than they did in the period after the 2020 presidential election, according to a report from the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public.
As Nov. 8 approaches, researchers predict that there will be a flurry of rumors, misinformation and conspiracy theories on Election Day and beyond, similar to 2020. But this year, the people engaging in those narratives are better organized, more connected, and already deeply familiar with election fraud claims.
“The audiences are already primed just from all that happened in 2020,” Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington and co-founder of the Center for an Informed Public, said during a call with reporters on Friday.
Researchers have repeatedly found that voter fraud across the U.S. is extremely rare and that the nation’s elections have a high degree of integrity. Even so, claims to the contrary have flourished in recent years, stoked in part by former President Donald Trump.
From “SharpieGate” in Arizona—where some voters believed using the felt-tipped markers invalidated their ballots—to suspicions over alleged suitcases full of illegal ballots in Georgia, election and voter fraud narratives were widespread in 2020. While these claims were found to be false, concerns of this sort haven’t gone away.
“The same sort of narratives that we saw in 2020, we expect to see a lot of them again this time,” Mike Caulfield, a...
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