Disinformation

"What we're seeing now is a trend towards policing other people's voting behavior," said Emma Steiner, a disinformation analyst at the nonpartisan group Common Cause. "It's basically an endless template for taking a picture of someone or a video and saying, 'Oh, actually what they're doing here is criminal and you can trust me on this, and we need to find out who this person is and report them to the authorities.'" ... Common Cause's Steiner said "2,000 Mules" serves a different purpose. It gives people who've already bought into the fiction of election fraud a satisfying story – and a way to participate. "People feel like, I can do my part by watching this movie, keeping an eye out for these ballot mules and attempting to ensure that these people are not voting where I'm voting," she said.

Suzanne Almeida, the director of state operations at nonpartisan watchdog Common Cause, agreed. "It's obviously something we're concerned about. Everyone has the right to vote free from intimidation [...] but this isn't a national wave of people who are armed at ballot boxes," Almeida told Newsweek. "As we are talking about it, if we are thinking there are armed people at drop boxes everywhere, it's going to make it less likely for voters to vote," she said. That is "doing the job of the folks who want to be intimidating for them." ... Almeida said if the ballot drop box a voter wants to use doesn't feel safe, they should head to a different one. She said it is likely too close to Election Day to post a ballot in the mail, but that in many states, people can turn it in at elections offices. "In several states, there's also a process where you can surrender your vote by mail or absentee ballot and then vote in person on Election Day, if that feels safer," she said.

Jill Greene, the state representative for Common Cause, the national good-government organization, said that the many unfounded and untruthful claims posed a challenge for voters. “They don’t really know what to believe,” she said.

Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of the nonpartisan voter education and advocacy group Common Cause Texas, said that while so far there have not been many complaints to his group’s hotline, he is concerned that poll observers could overstep in this year’s tense atmosphere. During a training last week, Gutierrez said volunteers reported seeing people without the required identification circulating at polling locations close to voters. One Black voter complained to the hotline that when he showed up to vote at a polling location at a southwest Dallas community college, a White man outside told him he had to first surrender his cellphone and smartwatch, Gutierrez said. He said the voter complied, cast his ballot and recovered his items, only to discover the man who seized them “was not a worker at that poll site. They were just trying to be intimidating.”

Yosef Getachew, director of the media and democracy program at Common Cause, said there’s a significant risk that misinformation spreading so soon before the election could confuse or frighten voters, or lead to more polarization or even acts of violence. “Rather than cave in to conspiracy theorists and propaganda peddlers, we urge Musk to ensure Twitter’s rules and enforcement practices reflect our values of democracy and public safety,” Getachew said.

Last week, Elon Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. Soon after closing the deal, Musk fired Twitter’s top executives including its CEO, CFO, General Counsel, and Head of Legal Policy, Trust and Safety. More layoffs are expected to be made in the coming days.