Voter fraud disinformation is rampant in the final sprint of the American elections

Paris, France (AFP) Social media was flooded with baseless claims of voter fraud in the final hours of the US presidential election – until Donald Trump claimed victory.

Key swing states Pennsylvania and Georgia were targeted by claims of ballot tampering and non-citizen votes, including videos from US intelligence officials linked to Russian-backed disinformation campaigns.

Despite weeks of claiming this year’s election was marred by widespread voting irregularities, the former president declared a victory “like no other” and vowed to “heal” the country in a stunning comeback to the White House.

Alleging fraud “has become a classic mobilization technique for populist or far-right leaders such as Donald Trump,” said Julien Giry, a French expert on US disinformation.

Leaders will claim the loss is due to fraud, or claim that “there was no fraud because we indicated it in advance,” he said.

Posts on X, the platform of Trump cheerleader and fellow billionaire Elon Musk, played a major role in sowing doubt about the integrity of the voting process.

The so-called “Election Integrity Community” that Musk created to “share potential incidents of voter fraud or irregularities” spread multiple claims that were debunked by AFP, including that voting machines would flip votes from Trump to Kamala Harris.

Other posts falsely shared images of ballot boxes being fraudulently discarded in hurricane-hit North Carolina.

But Trump’s decisive victory appears to have dampened the online frenzy.

Hundreds of thousands of mentions of “fraud,” “voting fraud” and “cheating” peaked on social media on election day before dropping sharply after Trump’s victory, according to a network analysis tool from French company Visibrain.

“Things are almost certainly calmer on this front today than they would have been if Trump had lost or narrowly won,” said Ethan Porter, a professor and researcher at the George Washington University Misinformation/Disinformation Lab.

-‘A fine line’-

The former president never conceded defeat in the 2020 election, a denial that culminated in a violent attack by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol weeks later in an attempt to block the election’s certification.

Building on the already tense political climate, disinformants have also stoked fears of physical violence during this year’s presidential election, culminating in hoax bomb threats at multiple polling stations that authorities have attributed to a Russian interference campaign.

In the hours before polls closed, Trump claimed there was “a lot of talk about massive cheating” in Pennsylvania’s largest city and that law enforcement was “coming.”

A city official immediately denied the claim, calling it “yet another example of disinformation,” while the Philadelphia Police Department and the district attorney’s office rejected the baseless accusation.

Trump won the state’s 19 electoral college votes — considered the biggest prize in this year’s election — helping him reach the necessary minimum of 270 electoral votes.

Before polls closed, online researcher Renee DiResta posted on the social platform Threads that the influencers she monitored on Election Day took a more subdued approach to fraud allegations.

“There’s a fine line between laying the groundwork to claim fraud when you lose and not wanting to look foolish when you complain loudly and your guy wins.”