Disinformation

“We’re seeing a bit of a scramble for the right message” among election deniers online, said Emma Steiner, who monitors disinformation for Common Cause. She said concessions from candidates including Dixon in Michigan and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania make “it a little more difficult for election deniers to continue.”

“Sometimes, with tactics like this, the story is the intimidation,” Suzanne Almeida, director of state operations for the watchdog group Common Cause. “It’s about making a movement seem bigger than it is … making a fringe idea feel very mainstream, and like it’s everywhere.”

On Tuesday, misinformation researchers tried to get Twitter’s attention to take down unproven rumors and lies. Yosef Getachew, the media and democracy program director of the pro-democracy advocacy group Common Cause, tweeted that “a few super spreaders have been spreading election disinformation narratives throughout the course of the day” and that “not only have these tweets not been removed but many have gone viral, potentially misleading and confusing voters.”

Emma Steiner, a disinformation analyst with the government watchdog group Common Cause, says election deniers are scrambling to find effective narratives for spreading disinformation about the midterm elections. "Because [GOP] candidates like Dr. [Mehmet] Oz in Pennsylvania and Tudor Dixon in Michigan have already conceded, that makes it a little more difficult for supporters to push claims of election fraud," Steiner told reporters Wednesday.

Suzanne Almeida, director of state operations for Common Cause, a government accountability watchdog group, said that while her organization had received numerous reports about people monitoring polling locations with cameras, in most of those situations, there was no direct intimidation of voters. “I am happy to report that today has been relatively quiet on the political violence front,” she said.

“The most concerning thing is the way those isolated incidents are being used to spread mis- and disinformation and lies around the election in an attempt to undermine people’s confidence and faith in the election,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for the nonpartisan group Common Cause.