Rumors of voter intimidation at the polls, non-citizens voting, and ABC ‘preemptively’ declaring Harris the victor in Pennsylvania

2024 U.S. ELECTIONS RAPID RESEARCH BLOG

RESEARCH MEMO | OCTOBER 31

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. It was crossposted on the CIP’s election rumor research Substack newsletter.

As we race towards Election Day, we’ll be producing our usual “weekly” rapid research memo twice a week. Each memo captures the emerging rumors we’ve been seeing across social media in recent days. 

This collection highlights novel or viral rumors our researchers have identified using a combination of qualitative, quantitative, digital ethnographic, and visual, methodologies. Some of these rumors have been featured in longer analysis pieces on our Substack newsletter (linked below). Many of these rumors are false, but some may be true or partially true. Often, they are misleading in one of five familiar ways, as we discuss in this analysis.

If you are a journalist, researcher, or election official who would like more information on a particular rumor, or wish to speak to the CIP research team about our ongoing rapid research findings, you can contact us using this Google Form. 

This Week On Our Substack

We put out longer analysis pieces as well as shorter rapid research blog posts on our Substack. Last week, we published several rapid research items, including: “Unfolding blame game between Left and Right as Pennsylvania announces fraudulent voter registrations in Lancaster County” and a reported analysis exploring “Evidence generation infrastructure in the 2024 election.” We also published a memo earlier this week. 

Sign up to receive future updates via our Substack or find our election rumor research cross posted on the CIP’s 2024 Rapid Research Blog.

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Emergent Rumors

Unfolding blame game between Left and Right as Pennsylvania announces fraudulent voter registrations in Lancaster County

• Earlier this week, we published a rapid research note about rumors stemming from reports of confirmed voter registration fraud in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. 
• On Friday, October 25, Lancaster County released a statement about 2500 voter registrations being investigated for potential fraud. At the time of the press conference, many of the registrations were deemed as confirmed cases of fraud. The actors involved and motivations are still unknown. This was reported on October 22 by the election clerk’s office to the District Attorney, and a press conference was held later that day on October 25.
• Rumoring has occurred within both left- and right-leaning communities online. On the political right, several prominent accounts used video clips of the press conference to challenge the prevailing narrative from experts (and many Democrats) that widespread voter registration fraud isn’t real. 
• This framing is misleading in two familiar ways: (1) it ignores that this attempted fraud has a remedy — it was discovered and therefore will not impact results, and (2) it exaggerates the extent or impact of one evidence, to suggest without evidence that it is representative of larger trends. Contrary to this case supporting the idea that fraud is widespread, it reinforces the fact that elections are secure. 
• Among left-leaning communities, a narrative has emerged directly targeting Scott Presler, a right-leaning influencer and activist, by speculating without evidence that he might be behind the Lancaster County fraud. Presler’s high-profile Republican National Committee-backed “get out the vote” efforts and his vocal focus on registering Republican voters in Luzerne and Lancaster counties, particularly among the Amish population, have been brought into the conversation.
• Figure 2 visualizes the spread of these rumors across time. It illustrates how on X, mainstream media reporting on the fraud occurred simultaneously to newsbrokering from @BehizyTweets and @DC_Draino, both conservative influencers on X. Early attention appears to have been driven by both media and newsbrokers, although engagement on X was primarily driven by the newsbrokers, who received 74,824 retweets and 40,870 retweets, respectively. 
• Over the following days, other influencers and elites continued to amplify the event. This included conservative activist Scott Presler and Donald Trump, who misleadingly exaggerated the extent of the discovered fraudulent voter registrations by suggesting that similar fraud was happening in other Pennsylvania counties where no fraud has been reported. 

Rumors of voter intimidation and accusations of voter suppression in Bucks County, Pennsylvania

• On Tuesday, October 29, Trump campaign political director James Blair posted on X that Democrats were “pretend[ing]” to be election officials in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a move Blair called “Intimidation tactics!” Blair retweeted a tweet from Collin Rugg, showing a video of a voter unable to vote because the polling station cut the line at 1:45 PM. 
• Later, Blair posted that officials told people to leave lines and return at less busy times. Other accounts engaging in this conversation framed the long lines and early closing of polling stations as indicative of alleged intentional efforts by Democrats to intimidate and suppress likely Republican voters. 
• Blair also posted videos of police officers alleging that they were suppressing the vote. Other, presumably left-leaning internet users retweeting Blair, alleged without conclusive evidence that these officers were paid actors working for the Trump campaign. 
• During the rumoring event, True The Vote, a conservative election integrity organization, urged voters in Bucks County to submit reports of election issues to them.
• Bucks County saw long lines for voting due to Pennsylvania not having an early on-site voting system at designated early polling spots. Instead, Pennsylvanian voters who wish to vote early can request a mail-in ballot — in person or online — that they can submit by mail or at country elections offices. The last day to do this was October 29, which led to long lines of voters waiting to apply for on demand ballots at election offices.
• The issue was ultimately remedied. On Wednesday, October 30, a Pennsylvania judge sided with the Trump campaign to afford an extension to Pennsylvania voters wanting to apply for an early mail ballot in an attempt to provide more options for voters to alleviate wait times. 

Viral X post claims a Canadian voted in the U.S. election

• An anonymous account who claims to be a Canadian citizen posted a picture of a filled-out ballot (voting for Trump-Vance) on October 28, claiming that because the US does not enforce Voter ID laws, they could drive over the border and vote in the Presidential election.
• As posted by BBC News reporter Shayan Sardarizadeh, the image of a ballot that this account used was previously posted by a different X user on October 13.
• The initial post received nearly 14 million views on the platform and has since received a Community Note to highlight its reused image. X limited the visibility of this tweet due to a potential violation of X’s rules on civic integrity.   
• Sardarizadeh also highlighted similar examples of claims from other X users across the globe, which he describes as a “viral trolling campaign” of users “pretend[ing] to have illegally voted for Donald Trump” and referencing the lack of voter ID laws and enforcement. As of the time of writing, we have not seen reporting from mainstream news websites on these accounts.
• This is an example of a rumor misleading via false evidence (where the images posted are promoting a fabricated narrative), from our 5 moves of misleading election rumors writeup.

Alabama Secretary of State claims to have evidence that Biden is registering non-citizen voters

• Posters on X shared video clips of the Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen claiming that he has evidence that the Biden administration is providing voter registration forms to non-citizens. The clip, taken from Newsmax, argues that a Biden policy “mandates that noncitizens receive information regarding registering to vote in Alabama and registration forms required to register.” 

• Allen repeated the claims on the state’s official website. In the press release, Allen points to federal policies that mandate that “anyone who comes into contact with certain state agencies be provided with voter registration information.” Allen has regularly repeated the claim over the past several months. Allen’s claim is accurate, but misleading. The National Voter Registration Act requires states to offer voter registration opportunities at motor vehicle agencies and several other government offices, such as Armed Forces recruitment offices and offices providing public assistance for people with disabilities. These opportunities are intended to make it easier for citizens to register to vote. When applying for voter registration, applicants must attest to their citizenship.
• The Act also outlines procedures for voter roll maintenance to ensure records are accurate and current, which includes a provision that prohibits  states from removing people from their rolls 90 days ahead of a federal election. Allen had tried to remove alleged non-citizens, many of whom he acknowledged were actually naturalized U.S. citizens, after the 90 day deadline, prompting a federal court to block his move. There is no evidence that non-citizens are voting in Alabama.   

False claims of non-citizens cutting in line and voting in Pennsylvania 

• A video shared on X claims that “foreigners” were taken to the front of a two-hour line at a voting location in Pennsylvania to vote. The individual interviewed in the video also claimed that one voter was not registered in the system with their correct name and was told that they could “change their name.” Notably, the video starts with a shot, supposedly outside of the voting location, in which individuals are speaking in a non-English language. The tweet claims that “buses of non-English speaking ‘citizens’” were guided to the front of the line, and that they were “all wearing Harris Walz stickers.” 
• Elon Musk responded to the original poster asking “Is this real” to which they confirmed that it was.
• Others sharing the story located the incident to Bethel Park, a borough near Pittsburgh.
• Allegheny County officials responded to the viral video, noting the taping of a brief conversation between voters, their translators and a county employee. The county confirmed that, per usual practice, elderly and disabled people were allowed to sit while they waited for their applications process with able-bodied voters returned to the back of the line. In other words, nobody was cutting in line. 
• PolitiFact also fact-checked the video’s claims, rating the rumors as “false.”

Rumors swirl around Trump’s “secret plan” to overturn election results with Mike Johnson

• A popular TikTok account shared clips of a recent Trump rally where Trump claimed to have a “secret” that means that “they are going to do really well with the House.” The video overlays a screenshot of an X post claiming that Trump plans to “sow enough doubt about the election results in key states so that the House can declare a contingent election and proclaim Trump the victor.”
• Similar sentiments were shared on Bluesky and Threads — with users sharing a clip from CNN in which U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman makes similar claims about the use of the House to overturn election results.
• There are a few and extremely rare mechanisms that could potentially give Congress more power over the certification of the Presidential race. For more details, see this analysis from the Constitutional Accountability Center. 

New York voter turned away based on a false “90-day rule” about registrations 

• Rumors shared on X and TikTok claim that a voter was told by a poll worker that they could not vote since their registration was updated less than 90 days ago. 
• The original poster on X also posted as a follow-up that they called the Election Protection hotline and were informed that there is, in fact, no 90-day rule that would make them ineligible. The poll worker gave them wrong information, something that several users also said. 
• Users sharing the story on TikTok shared the story as an example of “voter intimidation from poll workers,” though there is not yet evidence that the poll worker did this intentionally. 
• We did not find a statement from New York officials regarding this claim. 

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Odds and Ends

• Posters on Bluesky shared claims that Colorado election officials thwarted a scheme to cast votes on stolen mail ballots. According to reporting by The Colorado Sun, Colorado election officials shared that they had disrupted efforts to cast votes on stolen mail ballots in Mesa County through the state’s voter signature verification process. Commenters on Bluesky discussed the potential political motivations of those behind the scheme.
• A former Republican candidate was arrested and charged with stealing several election ballots in Indiana. The accused, Larry Savage, has been charged with folding up two ballots and stealing them during an election “test.” Savage claimed he was told he was allowed to take the ballots. Users on Twitter responded to the story suggesting (without statistical evidence) that it was consistently Republican-leaning individuals who had been arrested for voting-related charges.
• A driver found a box and a bag carrying early voting ballots in the middle of the road in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Comments on the story shared via TikTok varied, with some users expressing concern about the system and others framing the accident as intentional and part of larger election fraud issues. The county’s elections supervisor said that the ballots had already been scanned and tabulated; the supervisor also reported that the employee responsible for the “human error” was fired. 
• Posts on TikTok and X allege that someone had already voted 29 times in the state of Michigan. This was found to be a glitch in the system for reporting, but that these were not counted as separate votes. The investigation into this rumor, and the result that these votes were not being counted multiple times, was highlighted by Lara Trump (the head of the RNC and daughter-in-law of Donald Trump).

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Viral TikTok Trends and Rumors

Our research team has developed a qualitative research method designed to surface election administration-related content tailored to different community, identity and interest groups. The following is a collection of videos and trends our researchers have captured in the past week. 

• Possible Voter Fraud in Pennsylvania: A Spanish-language TikTok shares the story highlighted above about the district attorney’s office in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, investigating the scope of confirmed voter registration fraud that put into question the legitimacy of 2500 registration forms.
• Local ABC Affiliate Airs Pennsylvania Election Results Preemptively: Multiple viral posts shared screenshots of X posts commenting on an ABC News segment that accidentally showed Harris winning over Trump in Pennsylvania with 100% votes counted, despite it being days before the election. Most of these posts are sharing screenshots of X posts with no additional commentary, except for one post that speculates that this may not have been a mere accident and another post that connects this to the Bucks County lines closing early as evidence of a larger effort to suppress Republican voters. The ABC affiliate published a note that test election results were accidentally put on the air. Fact-checkers assert that a test being shown on air is not evidence of cheating. 
• Virginia Rulings on Alleged Non-Citizens Being Removed from Voter Rolls: A creator shares a screenshot of an article (source unknown) that shares Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s opposition to a ruling that supposedly reinstates alleged non-citizens to voter rolls. He vowed to appeal the ruling, specifically filing for an injunction to prevent non-citizens from being reinstated. The Supreme Court blocked the other federal judge’s injunction, allowing Virginia to remove the alleged non-citizens from the rolls.