2024 U.S. ELECTIONS RAPID RESEARCH BLOG

RESEARCH MEMO | NOVEMBER 4

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 with greater frequency. 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 the most recent installment in our “What to Expect When We’re Electing” series detailing the “Uncertainty, Rumor-Gathering, and Lawsuits” we anticipate rolling out on Election Day.

A Note on Information Dynamics

Finding a signal in the noise of rumoring can be more difficult right before and on Election Day. There is a lot more content, a lot more rumoring, and a lot more speculation. We are in the “flood the zone with sh*t” phase of election rumoring. As polls close tomorrow, certain salient rumors may consolidate into a few core themes and cases as attention is narrowed by influencers, political actors, and media. 

As we note in our “What to Expect When We’re Electing” piece on election week rumors, we can expect to see people posting instances of real or perceived voting issues. These may range from problems with voting machines, registration issues, emergency closures, altercations between voters and election workers and more. Many issues will have remedies, though these may not be reported on immediately or shared by people who initially spread the rumor. While “fake evidence” or entirely fabricated images or videos tend to be rare, they may increase on Election Day, when fact-checkers may be more strained. 

Emergent Rumors

Post office box break-in leads to potential stolen ballots in Twin Lake, Michigan

• Election officials in Muskegon County, Michigan, highlighted concerns that a break-in at a post office may have resulted in stolen absentee ballots. Officials have directed locals to use the Michigan Voter Information Center online to check the status of their ballot. 
• The Gateway Pundit amplified the incident on X through a post which linked an article about this incident to their website, drawing a tenuous connection between this and a separate allegation of Democratic voter registration fraud in Muskegon County that the outlet has previously published though it has been debunked.  
• The story has thus been used to amplify mistrust around voting in the county, despite election officials highlighting that the number of impacted ballots is low and that any impacted voters can still make sure their vote is counted. Officials reiterated that voters should continue to drop off their absentee ballots as usual. 

Nationwide issue with Dominion voter assist terminals and “straight-party” voting leads to misleading rumors of widespread fraud

• Dominion Voter Assist Terminals (VATs) are used by voters with disabilities to help them mark their ballots. A recently discovered error has emerged on some VATs where an error message appears if a voter selects the “straight party” option at the start of the process but then casts their vote for candidates of different parties later on.
• In a video widely shared on X, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson states this is a programming issue that has impacted machines “nationwide.” In a press report, the elections department further highlighted that the error would not “change anyone’s votes” but would make the process more inconvenient as voters would need to double check their selection.  
• Commenters on X expressed frustration over the issue, linking it to other narratives about Dominion voting machines and, in some cases, suggesting the error is evidence that the Democrats are intentionally using Dominion machines in order to cheat. Most posts about the topic lack key context of the situation – namely that this issue is limited only to specific Voter Assist Terminals for people with disabilities, and that the issue will not inhibit or change a voter’s choice. 
• The case highlights how actual incidents of election mishaps, which are rare and usually quickly addressed, are used to support unfounded accusations of intentional wrongdoing, shared by and among individuals primed to distrust election procedures and outcomes. Our recent “What to Expect” piece examines how this priming and loss of trust, combined with a mature evidence generation infrastructure, will drive election day rumoring. 

RNC claims to have stopped Democrats from counting duplicate ballots in Michigan; rumors stem from a misinterpretation of data reporting, not actual duplicate ballots

• Popular X account DC_Draino posted a retweet from Lara Trump claiming that the RNC stopped “Michigan Democrats from counting 168,000 duplicate ballots, adding that the “RNC acted that quickly to fix it.” The original post from Lara Trump reposted a Rasmussen Reports post that claimed that one voter ID had voted “29 separate” times already in Michigan. Lara Trump claimed that they had received the reports through their election integrity team and had investigated the matter.
• Other accounts posted similar claims of thousands of voters casting ballots from multiple addresses, and the claim was also spread across platforms, including on Facebook.
• According to fact-checking from Lead Stories, representatives from Michigan’s Department of State confirmed that “there were no fake or duplicate ballots” and that the rumor was a result of misinterpretations of a formatting error displayed in Michigan’s Qualified Voter File data reporting, displaying all of the addresses voters have ever been associated with, along with their ID. The display error had nothing to do with the actual number of ballots associated with that voter; each voter gets one vote based on their most recent address.  The formatting error has since been corrected. 
• Lara Trump’s original post “confirmed that it was a glitch in the system — these duplicates were not and will not be counted.” However, DC Draino’s interpretation leads readers to believe the RNC prevented the counting of ballots rather than the reality that there were never duplicate ballots to begin with. 

Colorado’s Secretary of State accused  in social media rumors of intentionally leaking passwords for voting machines in 63 counties

• Social media rumors accused Colorado Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold of intentionally leaking over 600 passwords for voting machines in 63 counties.
•  Viral posts on X claimed that an individual who swore on penalty of perjury downloaded the password file from Griswold’s website and “discovered the hidden tab simply by clicking unhide.” Popular account Libs of TikTok also shared the story on X, alongside a TV news story of Griswold talking about the incident.
• These rumors reflect a real error where a Secretary of State department employee accidentally publicly posted partial voting machine passwords, but misleadingly exaggerated its potential impacts to election security and falsely accused Griswold of doing this intentionally.
• According to reporting from Colorado Public Radio, Griswold said that the employee responsible for the passwords ending up online “no longer works for the state.” Griswold also confirmed that the state did not see the password leak as “a security threat to Colorado’s elections,” saying the passwords posted online were “partial” and not enough on their own to access the machines’ operating systems. Nonetheless, Colorado election workers are taking action to mitigate potential vulnerabilities caused by the leak “out of an abundance of caution.”
• Colorado Public Radio also explained in later reporting that former President Trump’s campaign has demanded that the Secretary of State take action to halt and redo ballot processing that has already begun in counties impacted by the leak, raising further security concerns. 
• Fact-checking from PolitiFact also covered the rumor, particularly debunking accusations that Griswold has “personally or maliciously leaked information that endangered the election process.” Fact-checking also highlighted the strength of security around voting machines, including that in addition to needing multiple passwords, anyone accessing the systems also required security clearance. 

Fake Videos Found to Be Spread By Russian-Originated Accounts and Followed By a Statement From FBI

• The FBI released a statement about two fake videos that falsely claimed to be from the FBI regarding election security. The BBC has reported that these could be from a Russian-backed disinformation operation. 
• The videos mention Bellingcat, an independent investigative collective of researchers, investigators, and citizen journalists, and Elliott Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat who is an investigative journalist from Britain. Higgins posted a thread on X about the fake videos and documented a few of the accounts that spread the videos. 
• Reporter Derek Johnson also covered this story in CyberScoop, documenting the evolution of the story, the FBI’s response, and Higgins’ comments from X. 

Odds and Ends

• Rumors spread on X, as well as alt-tech platforms, including Telegram, Gab, Truth Social, and Gettr, claim a non-citizen Chinese student at the University of Michigan was allowed to cast a ballot. Users shared reporting from The Gateway Pundit that claims that, due to Michigan’s tabulation system, the vote cannot be retrieved and will count. Coverage in The Detroit News reiterates the claims, also highlighting the legal penalties the student now faces. Posters sharing the story claim it is evidence of the ease of illegal voting and the probable existence of thousands of non-citizen voters. 
• Posters on X complained that Donald Trump’s name does not appear prominently enough on California’s digital ballots. They claim that Trump’s name does not appear on the first page of voting options and argue that this constitutes election obstruction. A community note attached to the post points out that the order of candidates is randomized and rotated across districts, referring to the California Secretary of State’s website. 
• In multiple states, rumors are emerging that voting machine printed ballots  did not reflect what the voters believed they had selected on the digital interface. In Georgia, an anecdote about a voter mistakenly selecting the wrong candidate and noticing the disparity on the printout led to rumors on social media, amplified by Marjorie Taylor Greene. A similar issue occurred in Tarrant County, Texas, with a highly shared video. These claims were confirmed to be isolated incidents. These print-outs act as a paper confirmation of digital selections so that the voter can confirm their vote was recorded correctly and, if not, get help from election officials to submit a new ballot.
• Several posts on X featured a video claiming to show a voting machine from Laurel County, Kentucky, which displayed a user seemingly unable to select Donald Trump. This has since been fact-checked, and the Attorney General’s office investigated the issue and released a statement clarifying that the error occurred when voters accidentally pressed the area between the selection boxes. Similar rumors have also surfaced in other states, including Tennessee and Arkansas. 
• The U.S. intelligence community has issued a statement saying that Russia is behind viral videos supposedly showing recent Haitian immigrants talking about undertaking voter fraud in Georgia. Posters responding to the story on X displayed distrust in the intelligence community and their assessment.
• A popular Vietnamese-language YouTube channel suggests that Kamala Harris is “buying” votes from Black male voters due to the campaign’s efforts to engage with the Black community. There is no evidence of any campaign paying for votes. 
• A video of a man dropping his ballot at a drop box in Lincoln, Nebraska was framed as evidence of a ‘ballot mule’ in an X post that received 25k reposts, despite the fact that nothing in the video appears to be out of the ordinary. The man has since been identified as a first-time voter, and authorities have rebuked those who made the false accusations. 

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Photo at top by Element5 Digital via Unsplash