Disinformation

“We have never certified an election on election night,” said Sylvia Albert, director of elections for Common Cause, a non-profit group that has been tracking election misinformation. “This is nothing new. It’s just people trying to undermine faith in elections.”

“There are attempts to use those election administration and voting machine issues that election workers are working to fix to spin a disinformation campaign,” said Jesse Littlewood, vice president of campaigns at Common Cause, which advocates for voting access.

Common Cause, a pro-democracy advocacy group, said this week that it had flagged several tweets pushing false narratives, such as that election results not announced on Tuesday night are a sign of fraud. The group said that “it has taken Twitter much longer than normal to adjudicate” whether the posts violated its policies, a process that usually takes less than three hours but was unresolved after more than three days.

But Suzanne Almeida, director of state operations for Common Cause, said late Tuesday that monitors were relieved by how quiet the day had been. “I am happy to report that today has been relatively quiet on the political violence front,” she told reporters late Tuesday. “We were absolutely prepared for more significant incidents, but they simply have not come to fruition.”

“What we are seeing are things that we usually see on Election Day,” said Susannah Goodman, director of election security at Common Cause. “Sometimes voters are going in and one of the voting machines isn’t working, or lines are a little longer.”

Researchers tracking misinformation ahead of the midterms notified Twitter on Friday about three posts from well-known far-right figures that advanced debunked claims about election fraud. The posts remain up three days later. When Common Cause asked Twitter for an update on Monday, the platform said the posts were “under review.” Before Musk took over, Twitter responded much more quickly, said Jesse Littlewood, vice president for campaigns at Common Cause. The group said they had been in regular contact with Twitter staff before Musk took over. Now, they are getting a response from a generic email address. “We had been getting much faster decisions from them, sometimes within hours,” said Littlewood. Now, he said, “It’s like pushing the button for the walk sign at the stop light, and nothing is happening.”