Election Protection

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.

Susannah Goodman, director of election security for the government watchdog group Common Cause, says some polling sites are seeing their lines of voters grow because of issues with voting machines, including ballot scanners that need fixing. ... But Goodman stresses there are no major concerns so far. "These are things we see in every election cycle. There are glitches in the system. But election administrators have learned from the past and they have resiliency built in."

“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.”

Jesse Littlewood, the vice president for campaigns with voting rights group Common Cause, told VICE News that while he has seen references to the plan to “overwhelm” the system pick up in recent weeks, he thinks that the idea is still relatively marginal. There are, however, dangers posed by the spread of this message, particularly the idea that people should vote as late in the day as possible. “The danger is that it could cause some of the voters who listen to this idea to miss their chance to vote,” Littlewood said. “If you believe that you need to vote late in the day on Election Day, if you have a family emergency, you could miss your opportunity to vote, so it could disenfranchise individuals who should have the right to participate in the election.”