Social media, particularly from the right wing, are propagating much of the false information and uncertainty being circulated about voting opportunities like early voting and mail-in ballots, according to the Election Integrity Partnership, a non-partisan group examining this year’s elections.
As the Associated Press reports, partisan media outlets, social media influencers and high-profile individuals like the president’s son have been disseminating false information to sow distrust in the process and confuse voters on where and when to vote.
“What’s happening right now is these incidents are being framed in misleading ways that exaggerate their impact on the election,” Kate Starbird, an associate professor of Human-Centered Design and Engineering at the University of Washington who is part of the research group, said.
An example the report provided was the photos of ballots supposedly found in a dumpster. The photos, originally posted by a right-wing muckraking site, allegedly showed hundreds of ballots at a California landfill ready to be destroyed.
The photo was shared around social media sites, including by Don “Lucky Sperm” Trump, Jr. Junior mentioned it during rallies and in interviews, and he shared the photo numerous times across various social media platforms. He claimed it was evidence of a “fix” against his father’s campaign.
The photos, however, were two years old and showed ballots being recycled following the 2018 election–after they had been counted. The jurisdiction where the photo was supposed taken in 2020 hadn’t even mailed out their mail-in ballots yet.
Neither the original poster nor Lucky Sperm took the time to verify the information.