Saving democracy from fake election news
Does everyone remember that time in 2020 when a tractor-trailer rolled over on I-84, and uncounted absentee ballots scattered across the highway?
No? That's because it didn’t happen, but that didn't stop multiple Connecticut residents and others from sharing the lie on Twitter, and thus chipping away at state residents' trust in Connecticut's free and fair elections.
How about that time Donald Trump won a second term by a landslide? That didn’t happen, either, but that, too, hasn't stopped multiple Connecticut residents and others from taking to social media to share the lie. In 2021, some even stormed the Capitol over it in an insurrection that led to people dying by gun, stroke, heart attack, and suicide.
In addition, multiple posters periodically spread misinformation about the location and hours of polling places, the process of casting absentee ballots, and general election information critical to citizens' votes.
During this, a midterm election year, the state has announced it will hire an elections information security analyst to monitor social media platforms and corners of the dark web to try to stop disand misinformation before it spreads. Connecticut used federal funds to do something similar during the 2020 elections with no small amount of success, and during that pandemic year, the state's steady efforts to educate voters saw absentee voting rise significantly, said Scott D. Bates, Connecticut's deputy secretary of state.
How badly do we need this? The former administration taught us that our institutions — courts, elections, the police — depend on public trust, but in January, an ABC/Ipso poll said just 20 percent of people were “very confident” in the integrity of our country's elections, while 39 percent were “somewhat confident.”
Fake election news chips away at the democracy, and these days, the veil between the incubators of online nonsense and mainstream media grows increasingly thin. Here's an example of a recent conspiracy theory at its birth. See if you can follow it:
The former president recently posted on Truth Social, a failing social media platform which he began after being booted off Twitter. That day, he posted 18 times, though he deleted one post. The anonymous poster then counted the number of Truth Social posts referencing QAnon, the internet conspiracy theory factory that has been responsible for some of the age's most egregious lies. The 18th post the anonymous poster counted mentioned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
And then, Devin Nunes, a former U.S. representative and now CEO of Truth Social, separately posted a photo of a wine glass on the platform.
Pelosi owns a vineyard. According to the anonymous poster, when these unrelated events are decoded, they spell out a prophecy that Pelosi will lose her job soon.
You can be excused if this reads like a fevered dream of some yahoo sitting in his mother's basement, coated in Cheetos dust, because it is, but a February PRRI poll said a quarter of Republicans embrace at least some of QAnon's swill, and a new Southern Poverty Law Center study said that seven in 10 Republicans “agree to at least some extent” in the veracity of the so-called Great Replacement Theory, a racist idea that there is a concerted (read “deep state,” a phrase that means precisely nothing in the real world) effort to supplant conservative white voters with not-white immigrants. Such lies were once confined to the uglier corners of the dark web, a wild West kind of place where Google won't take you, but bad actors and bots have become skilled at jumping into the mainstream with the help of unand ill-informed sheepdogs willing to spread lies.
Even more chilling? That same SPLC poll said 44 percent of the people polled from all political persuasions believe our divisions could lead to a civil war.
Connecticut, where legislators also approved $2 million for media campaigns to educate voters, is among several states fighting the misinformation virus. New Mexico's secretary of state recently launched a website, “Rumor vs. Reality” which seeks to inform voters about elections, and dispel rumors as they bubble up. For the mid-term elections, Colorado has three experts who monitor the web for election lies, as they did in 2020.
Connecticut's new elections information analyst will pay attention to social media platforms as well as so-called internet subculture websites such as 4chan, which the Washington Post called a “wholly anonymous, anythinggoes forum.” Conspiracy theories often begin there — or on Reddit, which calls itself the “front page of the internet.” When dis- or misinformation pops up, the analyst will work with the secretary of the state's communication staff, as well as social media platforms and other partners.
The position pays $150,000 a year, and if you think that's too much, you haven't spent time on the dark web, where anonymity allows the sharing of the wildest suppositions imaginable, and where stupidity often takes root.
It has already been suggested that we not rename this person the “information czar” or “czarina,” because, predictably, some conservatives are wringing their hands over whether such efforts run afoul of the First Amendment. The National Review just published a short piece under the duplicitous headline, “Connecticut Taxpayers to Fund $150,000 Job Getting
Speech Removed from the Internet.” What an odd response. Please, everyone, enjoy your constitutionally protected freedom of speech. The government is not censoring social media, but wouldn't you think that even the most committed conservative would want honest information out there so we can all cast our ballots?
“You don't have a right to put out false information to deny the people the right to vote,” Bates said. “That's not OK in anybody's book. When you're talking about actively misleading people and impeding their ability to register and vote, to participate in our democracy, that's a threat to our democracy. Everybody knows that.”
Susan Campbell is the author of "Frog Hollow: Stories from an American Neighborhood," "Tempest-Tossed: The Spirit of Isabella Beecher Hooker" and "Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism and the American Girl." She is Distinguished Lecturer at the University of New Haven, where she teaches journalism.