A clerical mistake by Colorado election officials weeks ahead of the November election has taken on a conspiratorial spin, researchers found via Twitter data.
The Colorado Secretary of State's office, which oversees the state's elections, accidentally mailed about 30,000 postcards to non-citizens who were not eligible to vote containing instructions for how to register. At least some of the people who received the postcards are living in the country without authorization.
The materials sent out by the Secretary of State's office say that only U.S. citizens are eligible to vote and the office says it has safeguards to prevent non-citizens from registering and casting a ballot. Colorado Public Radio first reported the mistake on Oct. 7 and an NPR Twitter account retweeted that story the same day.
Social media engagement with the story remained flat over the weekend, according to Twitter data collected by the University of Washington and Stanford University's Election Integrity Partnership, which monitors social media discourse about elections.
But tweets casting doubt on whether or not the mailings were really an accident started almost immediately, says Mike Caulfield, a research scientist at University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public.
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