An influential person thought someone dumping ballots was “suspicious.” It was the postman

Two days before Halloween, a Pennsylvania postal worker was delivering a box of mail-in ballots to the Northampton County Courthouse. The man filming on his phone began asking questions and followed the postal worker into the building.

The man filming was told that the man with the ballot box was a postal worker.

“I don’t know, apparently he’s from the post office, but it looks very suspicious,” the man filming the video said, zooming in on what he said was an “obscene amount of ballots.”

The video then zoomed in to reveal a close-up of the postal worker’s face. As of November 2, it had nearly six million views.

Pennsylvania county officials confirmed to local news outlets that the man captured on video was the acting postmaster and was doing his job. After the video appeared online, he began receiving threats.

Even before Election Day, unsubstantiated rumors of election fraud begin to focus on specific government officials and voters. In 2020, this type of online activity led to harassment, threats, and ultimately played a role in inciting the January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol.

But this year, similar videos are appearing in a dedicated community on Elon Musk’s social media platform X, formerly Twitter, and are fueling more of the same type of speculation that could lead to threats and harassment.

Sharing your concerns and trying to make sense of the voting process is a normal part of a free and fair election process, said Renee DiResta, a research assistant professor at Georgetown University and an expert on election disinformation. “But there’s a really big difference between talking about an issue and making a face and accusing someone of cheating.”

In 2020, DiResta said many major social networks have done more to try to add context and expand information from credible sources. Many platforms have since abandoned the policy under pressure from Republicans. Perhaps the most important factor has been Twitter’s transformation into X since billionaire Elon Musk bought it in 2022 and gradually transformed the platform into a pro-conservative social network with minimal moderation policies.

“However, I would say the main difference this time is that X is embracing the communities that are making this kind of sensemaking effort,” DiResta said.

Over the past year, Musk has become a major supporter of Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and has himself become an active spreader of rumors about election fraud on X. This month, a super PAC founded by Musk to support Trump created a dedicated space on the social media platform to share crowdsourced cases of potential fraud in the elections, where he quickly gathered a large following – more than 60,000 users.

“Most people who respond to messages are convinced that the election was stolen, and so it seems more like a place where they’re just trying to gather evidence to prove what they’ve already decided happened. ” DiResta said. “And they’re concerned about it because they keep hearing it from the political elites they trust – people like Donald Trump and people like Elon Musk.”

Each individual post is woven into a much larger story of pro-Trump politicians and influencers, often with conspiratorial overtones, DiResta said. The consolidation is intended to mean that the evidence of election fraud is overwhelming and overwhelming, despite more than 60 court cases, multiple recounts and ballot audits that found no evidence of serious voting irregularities in 2020.

X did not respond to NPR’s request for comment.

Burnt by election lies

The impact on ordinary people caught up in these conspiracy theories is enormous.

The legal nonprofit Protect Democracy helped file a number of defamation lawsuits against election deniers after the 2020 election “on behalf of people who suddenly found themselves being lied to in the public sphere over claims they broke the law when they didn’t break the law.” law,” said democracy lawyer Jane Bentrott.

Trump supporters and partisan media organizations such as One America News have publicly retracted the allegations and reached settlements with people they falsely accused of election fraud.

One of the high-profile cases Protect Democracy is involved in is a defamation suit against Trump’s then-lawyer, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who baselessly accused two election officials in Georgia by name of ballot tampering.

Giuliani was found guilty of libel, and last year a jury awarded the couple $148 million.

“The flame that Giuliani ignited with these lies and passed on to so many others has changed every aspect of our lives. Our homes, our family, our jobs, our sense of security, our mental health,” said Shay Moss, one of the employees. after the jury returned their verdict.

“As he learned,” Bentrott said, “and hopefully others who pay attention learned, people who falsely accuse others of breaking the law can have serious consequences for their lies.”

But even successful defamation cases often take years, and Giuliani has yet to pay the women anything.

Protect Democracy has attempted to prosecute high-profile figures such as Giuliani for spreading false accusations. But overall, DiResta said, the media landscape of which these influencers are a part has remained untouched.

“What you’re seeing is a channel where someone is making an allegation, usually from a small account, from a person with a very concern that seems very real to them, but it’s picked up by a person who has, maybe, tens to hundreds of thousands of followers.”

DiResta examined how the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was motivated in part by the beliefs in the messages that pipeline generated.

The day after the Pennsylvania postal worker’s video was posted, its creator wrote on X that if the subject of his video was simply a government employee doing his job, “I will take it down and issue a corrective statement. We strive for the truth, whatever that may be.” “As of November 2, the video remains online.

DiResta said she is confident U.S. election officials are better prepared for the upcoming election, but ultimately, “The tone is still set at the top. People on social media may provide evidence, but they do so to fit within the boundaries set by political leaders.”

Copyright: NPR 2024