Tense US midterm race sparks fear of misinformation surge

A gush of misinformation around US midterm elections could turn into a torrent after voting ends, experts warn, as tensions grow around key razor-tight races.

Some results are not expected to be declared for days or weeks, a delay that could trigger what observers fear will be a flood of bitter challenges and unfounded claims of election malpractice.

Far-right Republican candidates-who endorse former president Donald Trump's baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him-have already seized on isolated voting machine glitches to launch what many saw as preemptive efforts to discredit the results. "After election night, the focus will narrow," the Election Integrity Partnership, a non-partisan research group, said in a report.

"As the public wakes up on Wednesday... to find some races still in play and some races in which their candidate unexpectedly lost, partisans will swing their attention to the rumors most relevant to those races, seeking to amplify them and spin them into larger stories."

The main focus is on the tight races in battleground states-including Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona-with a single seat enough to swing control of the Senate.

"If we have close elections, particularly if they involve party control of the US Senate, disinformation will get worse," Rick Hasen, a professor and director of the "Safeguarding Democracy Project" at UCLA law school told.

"It has now become common among Trump's supporters to believe that election theft in the US is common, despite all reliable evidence to the contrary. And these kinds of claims could well arise again in close elections."

The disputes could set the stage for a prolonged period of uncertainty, particularly as more than half the Republican midterm candidates are "election deniers" who have repeated Trump's debunked claims of fraud in the 2020 polls.