2024 U.S. ELECTIONS RAPID RESEARCH BLOG

This is part of an ongoing series of rapid research blog posts and rapid research analysis about the 2024 U.S. elections from the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. This article is crossposted on the CIP’s election rumor research Substack newsletter. 

Key Takeaways

• There is broad uncertainty around the extent of Hurricane Helene’s impacts on election processes and how they might be addressed. This is a vector for rumors. 
• Some influencers and political activists have framed the impact on election administration as politically motivated. A few have advanced conspiracy theories that political adversaries “control the weather” and that Helene was intentionally produced for electoral gain. 
• Presidential candidate Donald Trump has connected false rumors that federal aid money has been “stolen” by Democrats to be used on migrants to win their votes, a claim echoed by Elon Musk. 
• With Hurricane Milton about to make landfall in Florida, we anticipate the continuation of these types of rumors. 

Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida on September 26, 2024, and subsequently tracked north across the southeastern United States through parts of Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. The storm’s acute impacts have been staggering, including at least 230 deaths. It has also caused massive damage to critical infrastructure and sustained disruption to the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, especially in western North Carolina. At least a million people were without power five days after Helene made landfall. Another storm, Hurricane Milton, will make landfall in parts of Florida already hit by Helene, potentially compounding effects.  

In the wake of the disaster — and amidst the tragedy, disruption, and uncertainty — rumors emerged about how the 2024 election will be affected, drawing widespread attention in part because of the storm’s impact on swing states like Georgia and North Carolina. The concerns powering these rumors are warranted: damaged infrastructure and the displacement of thousands of people from their homes and communities carries a real risk of disrupting the ability for people to vote using normal procedures. 

Impacts on election administration from weather disasters are not unprecedented and election officials tend to work quickly to adapt to ensure affected communities can vote. Other storms, such as Hurricane Sandy in 2012, caused disruptions to normal election procedure and required rapid adaptations (e.g., allowing people to submit provisional ballots at any voting location) to ensure fair elections.  North Carolina, one of the swing states acutely impacted by Helene, has dealt with hurricane-related disruption to their elections before, such as Hurricane Dorian in the 2019. Hurricane Ian caused Florida to make emergency changes to election law in 2022 to ensure eligible voters could cast a ballot.

At the moment, as state and local election boards work quickly to communicate their plans, there is lingering uncertainty around the extent of the storm’s impacts on election processes and how they might be addressed. It is therefore not surprising to see rumors emerging from within communities grappling with the anxiety and uncertainty of the event — or to see bad actors attempting to exploit these conditions to push strategic narratives and unfounded conspiracy theories for political gain. With Hurricane Milton expected to make landfall this week in Florida, we anticipate rumoring to continue. 

In this rapid research analysis, we focus on two sets of rumors about the hurricane and its potential impacts on the 2024 election. The first set details general uncertainty about what voting processes and procedures will look like in the aftermath of the hurricane. The second set focuses on partisan rumors that have emerged. These include misleading or false rumors that 1) changes to election administration are intentionally hurting Republicans, as well as others that are more conspiratorial, including 2) that the hurricane was engineered to hurt Republicans, 3) and that disaster aid was used for migrants – sometimes tying this to the prominent narrative this cycle of non-citizen voting. 

Rumors emerging from uncertainty about voting processes and procedures

General confusion about voting processes — e.g., when, where, and how to vote — is a common contributor to election rumoring. The disruptions wrought by Hurricane Helene and the rapid adaptations to address them greatly enhance this confusion for people living in the affected areas. It is therefore not surprising to see many rumors about what the voting processes are or will be. A first wave of rumors has coalesced around three key questions: (1) how can displaced people who intended to vote by mail cast their ballots?; (2) how will people vote if their original polling location is closed?; and (3) how will people who lost their IDs due to the storm comply with certain states’ voter ID laws? Depending upon how the election progresses and how close the races in impacted states are, we anticipate a second wave of rumors — one that exploits the late-stage changes to the election processes to question the results — to emerge around election day and persist through certification.

Confusion and uncertainty around mail-in ballots

With people displaced from their homes and communities and with widespread disruptions to postal services in some areas, there is understandable confusion, uncertainty, and concern about mail-in voting within some areas in the affected states. There were early rumors spreading on X of thousands of missing mail-in ballots in North Carolina. There has also been speculation that large numbers of voters will not be able to receive their ballots due to displacement nor mail their ballots due to damaged infrastructure and disrupted services. Some social media users have complained about the North Carolina GOP’s rule change last year requiring mail-in ballots to be returned to county election offices, not just postmarked, by the end of election day.  We expect to see continued rumoring around mail-in voting in affected areas — including procedural rumors about how displaced people can effectively vote by mail and conspiracy theorizing around missing and/or rediscovered ballots — through the mail-in voting period.

Confusion and uncertainty around changes to voting locations

Polling locations — and especially emergency closures of polling locations — are another common focus of rumors about election administration, amplified when there are natural hazards and disasters. Though the full extent of the damage is still unknown, Hurricane Helene is likely to have made it impossible to use some of the designated polling locations for the 2024 election. Election officials are still working to complete site assessments and develop alternative plans. Residents (and others) are expressing concerns — on social media and elsewhere — about whether and how they will be able to successfully cast their in-person votes. We expect to see continued rumoring around these changes, including rumoring stemming from uncertainty and communication gaps, as well as (potentially) strategic efforts to exploit confusion to sow doubt in the process and results.

Concerns for people who have lost their IDs

Many people have lost their homes and their possessions, including their photo ID and other official documents, due to Hurricane Helene. This has led to rumors that people may be unable to vote due to voter ID laws in some of the affected states. Election officials at the state and local level are working to develop and communicate remedies. For example, the North Carolina State Board of Elections has set up a website explaining that current election law provides an ID exception for voters in counties that have experienced a “natural disaster” within the past 100 days. Georgia has created an online resource with information about how impacted voters can obtain a voter ID card. Online volunteers are attempting to help bridge communication gaps, for example by creating social media posts explaining how eligible voters can still cast their ballots if they have lost their ID. We expect concerns about lost photo IDs — and about any changes in the rules to allow people to vote without photo ID — to drive additional rumoring as in-person voting takes place.

Potential second wave of rumors alleging that late-stage rule changes produced an untrustworthy election 

As election officials adapt to Helene’s impacts and make changes to the original plans and, in some cases, procedures to ensure that eligible voters can effectively cast their votes, we expect to see a second wave of rumoring attempting to frame those changes in ways that sow doubt in the election results. The intensity of these second wave rumors depends in large part upon the outcomes of specific races, particularly close races with potential impact at the national level. If candidates who have previously participated in election denial lose close races in impacted states, we expect them to allege that changes to election rules in the wake of Hurricane Helene produced untrustworthy results.

Conspiracy theories about the disproportionate impact on Republican-dominated areas

Alongside rumors of uncertainty of the impact of Hurricane Helene on election administration, many claims and journalistic pieces focused on this being the first catastrophic event to hit two swing-states (North Carolina and Georgia) within six weeks of a presidential election, as reported by POLITICO. Because the most impacted states are potentially critical in determining the outcome of the election, this has fueled heightened rumoring that changes to election administration are motivated by partisanship and, on the conspiratorial end, baseless rumors that the hurricane was man-made and intentionally set in motion to swing the election. Finally, misleading narratives have spread that Federal Emergency Management Agency funding has been diverted to help migrants or Ukraine, with presidential candidate Donald Trump tying aid money to non-citizen voting in offline and online rhetoric. This section explores some of the explicitly partisan rumors that have spread about the hurricane’s impact on election administration. 

Rumors of partisan-motivated polling closures and process changes

Some prominent rumors apply partisan frames to existing concerns about how voting processes could be impacted in the aftermath of Helene. Sometimes these rumors imply that certain closures of post offices are intentionally done to suppress Republicans’ votes. For example, many posts on X about closures of post offices in Georgia referenced an article from PennLive (which appears to be a re-publication of reporting in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution). These posts reframed the story to imply that post offices in Republican areas in particular are being disproportionately closed. While concerns about post office preparedness to handle mail-in ballots in the aftermath of Helene are understandable, there is no evidence that the reason for these closures is partisan.

Conspiracy theories that the hurricane was man made to impact Republicans  

A few early partisan rumors applied conspiratorial frames, and some of these rumors were picked up by Republican elected officials and candidates later in the week.  On the weekend of September 28, X creator MattWallace888 (>2M followers) baselessly suggested that “elites” had engaged in “weather modification” to specifically target pro-Trump counties. In another tweet, he created a misleading map, presumably overlaying a 2020 election results map with the hurricane’s path in an attempt to evidence that Republican counties were disproportionately impacted, noting a “crazy coincidence!” The first tweet garnered over 11 million views. The conspiracy narrative —  that the hurricane was part of an intentional man made effort —  grew over time on X as well as other platforms. Similar claims picked up on TikTok, with some videos getting nearly 1 million views.   

The narrative broke into mainstream news when U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene baselessly claimed in a tweet on October 3 that “Yes they can control the weather,” insinuating Democrats had strategically created the hurricane for political benefit.  

 

Politicized rumors about FEMA aid funding, some connected to non-citizen voting

On September 30, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump posted a debunked claim on Truth Social that Democrats had abandoned relief efforts to certain areas because they are inhabited primarily by Republicans. Despite push back from fact checks and the White House, Trump has continued to push false claims in his rallies and Truth Social posts that the White House has “spent all” of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) money “for housing illegal migrants,” repeating a trope from Fox News host Jesse Watters. FEMA does offer millions in grants for its Shelter and Services Program to house migrants, however this is a separately appropriated fund; disaster aid comes from the Disaster Relief Fund, an entirely separate budget appropriated by Congress.

Trump took his narrative a step further, connecting claims that FEMA spent money on migrants to a broader narrative of non-citizen voting — which we have written about previously. In a rally on October 3, he falsely claimed the Biden administration “stole the FEMA money like they stole it from a bank so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season.” 

 In a tweet on October 4, Elon Musk shared the misleading claim that FEMA used its budget on “illegals” instead of Americans, which seems to echo “Great Replacement theory” tropes that Democrats are “importing” immigrants who will someday vote for them: “Yes, they are literally using YOUR tax dollars to import voters and disenfranchise you!” 

Other influencers have spread rumors in the wake of Hurricane Helene, falsely suggesting that FEMA funding had been diverted to support social services for immigrants. Others compared the size of FEMA funding to that of the much larger Ukrainian aid package; this narrative seems to resonate with a Russian disinformation campaign, the Good Old USA Project which sowed doubt about the amount of money spent on Ukraine versus domestic projects, and was reported in an affidavit released in early September 2024.

Communicating new voting information in the aftermath of disaster

Since uncertainty and lack of official information powers the rumor mill, it will be important for election officials to quickly develop and share their plans with the public — and for journalists and community leaders to work to communicate those plans to their communities. This will help to ensure that people are able to cast their vote and to reduce the spread of rumors and disinformation.

Many states have already released plans. Florida has a voting information center and has issued an executive order for ballot access comparable to one released in 2022 post Hurricane Ian, allowing for election officials to relocate polling locations, mail ballots to go to temporary addresses, and extensions in mail-in dates. 

The North Carolina Election Board released a post-Helene plan for voters, offering options to either vote in person (even if they had already requested a mail in ballot) or order a mail-in ballot to a temporary address; they also note that individuals who lost their IDs in the storm may vote without ID due to this exception. Georgia is also allowing for new addresses for mail-in ballots while still requiring voter IDs but has a consolidated tip center for voters impacted by the hurricane to secure new IDs, as well as information about any polling location changes. South Carolina has seen a recent extension in voter registration deadlines. 

With Hurricane Milton expected to make landfall in Florida this week, we anticipate that more rumors will circulate about election administration, ranging from questions and claims stemming from genuine confusion to a continuation of the conspiratorial narratives. With the aforementioned observed rumors in mind, both journalists and election officials should be mindful of continued rumoring narratives and be prepared to quickly share and amplify updated information to election administration. 

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PHOTO AT TOP: Flood waters from the Swannanoa River inundated the Biltmore Village area of Asheville, North Carolina following Hurricane Helene’s landfall in Florida. Photo courtesy North Carolina Department of Transportation / Flickr via CC BY 2.0