Here are 5 disinformation tactics voters should look for as election results come in

05 November 2024

The 2024 election has already been rife with disinformation from both domestic and foreign operatives. But disinformation may hit a fever pitch on Tuesday night as Americans are watching election returns.

This Election Day, the Mental Immunity Project (in collaboration with the News Literacy Project) is hoping to prevent Americans from being duped into believing or spreading disinformation by alerting voters of five key tactics disinformation artists will likely be using. The group warned that "elections have become flashpoints for false claims and bogus rumors about candidates and voting," and that there are several "common" ways that malign actors seek to dupe Americans.

The Mental Immunity Project began the list by mentioning that voters may see "raw videos presented out of context as 'evidence' of fraud." Number two on the list isn't a specific tactic, but rather just making sure Americans are aware that vote totals naturally "jump late at night" as densely populated urban centers — which are often the last to report their counts — could swing what appears to be a Republican victory to a Democratic victory given that rural counties tend to report first.

At number three, the group noted that "some people will try to declare a race over before it actually is." Former President Donald Trump, for example, prematurely declared victory on election night in 2020, only for mail-in ballots — which made up a bulk of ballots cast in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic — to be counted in the days following Election Day, which ended up securing victory for President Joe Biden. While the pandemic isn't a factor this year, it's worth noting that the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin both don't allow mail-in ballots to be counted until after polls close on Tuesday, meaning those states' results may not be known until later this week.

The penultimate guideline on the Mental Immunity Project's list is unique to 2024: The prevalence of artificial intelligence (AI) making it easy to create "deepfakes" that appear real on the surface but are actually completely fabricated. The group warned that "if people are sharing what they say is a shocking photo, video clip or audio recording of a candidate in the days leading up to the election, it might be an AI-generated fake."

"Check it against standards-based news sources to see if it's real," the group warned. "You can also do a reverse image search with tools like TinEye to identify AI-generated and digitally altered images."

Finally, voters are encouraged to "be ready for partisan claims about voter fraud and ineligible voters — even though election fraud is exceedingly rare."

"It's become increasingly popular during the last few presidential elections for campaigns and supporters to claim — even in advance — that cheating will take place," the group wrote. "But the evidence is clear: Election fraud cases are extremely rare."

One clear example of that happened last week in Georgia, in which Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger warned voters of an "obviously fake" video of what is purportedly a Haitian immigrant illegally voting multiple times. Raffensberger called the video "a production of Russian troll farms."

"As Americans we can’t let our enemies use lies to divide us and undermine faith in our institutions — or each other," he stated.

Click here to read the Mental Immunity Project's list in its entirety (PDF link).

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