Russia seen behind false reports of planned US election fraud in swing states
Authorities also expect Iran-linked operations to try to stoke violence by spreading disinformation; watchdog says false or misleading claims by Elon Musk got 2 billion views on X
Russia-linked disinformation operations have falsely claimed officials in battleground states plan to fraudulently sway the outcome of the extraordinarily close US presidential election, authorities warned hours before voting began Tuesday, adding that they also expected Iranian-linked operations to try to stoke violence by spreading disinformation.
Success in the seven swing states is key to winning the White House for rivals Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, and those states have previously been the focus of unsupported accusations of election fraud.
“Russia is the most active threat,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said Monday.
“These efforts risk inciting violence, including against election officials,” they added, noting the efforts are expected to intensify through Election Day and in the following weeks.
It was the latest in a series of warnings from the ODNI about foreign actors — notably Russia and Iran — allegedly spreading disinformation or hacking the campaigns during this election.
Tehran and Moscow have both denied such allegations in the past.
The latest ODNI statement cited the example of a recent video that falsely depicted an interview with a person claiming election fraud in Arizona, which involved creating fake overseas ballots and changing voter rolls to favor Harris.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes called the video and its claims “completely false, fake and fraudulent.”
US officials warned in late October that Russia-linked operations were behind a viral video falsely showing mail-in ballots for Trump being destroyed in the swing state of Pennsylvania.
The video, which garnered millions of views on platforms such as X, purported to show a man sorting through mail-in ballots from the state’s Bucks County and ripping up those cast for Trump.
The Bucks County Board of Elections branded the video as “fake,” saying that the envelope and other materials depicted in the footage are “clearly not authentic materials” belonging to or distributed by them.
A viral video posted today purports to show a poll worker in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, open and destory mail-in ballots for Trump.
Both the the county's board of eletions and Bucks County GOP say the video is fake, no such poll worker exists, and the ballots aren't authentic. pic.twitter.com/PUyU3c7t7D
— Shayan Sardarizadeh (@Shayan86) October 24, 2024
Cyabra, a firm that uses AI to detect online disinformation, said on Monday that an X account with 117,000 followers played a key role in helping spread the fake video.
X’s spokesperson said the social media platform took action against many accounts that shared the video.
In September, the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center said Russian operatives were ramping up disinformation operations to malign Harris’s campaign by disseminating conspiracy-laden videos.
Meanwhile, the non-profit group Center for Countering Digital Hate reported on Monday that false or misleading claims by billionaire Elon Musk about the US election have amassed 2 billion views on his social media platform this year.
X is also playing a central role in enabling the spread of false information about the critical battleground states that will likely determine the outcome of the race, according to election and misinformation experts.
An X spokesperson said the company’s Community Notes feature, which lets users add additional context to posts, is more effective at helping people identify misleading content than traditional warning flags on posts.
Since taking over the company formerly known as Twitter, Musk has curtailed content moderation and laid off thousands of employees. He also has thrown his support behind Trump.
Musk’s massive reach with nearly 203 million followers helps enable “network effects” in which content on X can jump to other social media and messaging platforms such as Reddit and Telegram, said Kathleen Carley, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and expert on disinformation. “X is a conduit from one platform to another,” she said.
At least 87 of Musk’s posts this year have promoted claims about the US election that fact-checkers have rated as false or misleading, amassing 2 billion views, according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate’s report.
In Pennsylvania, one of the seven key swing states, some X users have seized on instances of local election administrators flagging incomplete voter registration forms that would not be processed, falsely casting the events as examples of election interference, said Philip Hensley-Robin, Pennsylvania executive director at Common Cause, during a press briefing on Monday.
Common Cause is a nonpartisan organization that promotes accountable government and voting rights.
Some X accounts implied “that there was voter fraud, when in fact, we know very clearly that election officials and election administrators in all of our counties were following the rules and… therefore only eligible voters are voting,” Hensley-Robin said.
The 2024 US presidential campaign has been a particularly volatile one, and security for Election Day on Tuesday is being ramped up to unprecedented levels given concerns over possible civil unrest, election chicanery, or violence against election workers.
The states of Oregon, Washington and Nevada have activated the National Guard — and the Pentagon says at least 17 states have placed a total of 600 National Guard troops on standby if needed.
The FBI has set up a national election command post in Washington to monitor threats 24 hours a day through election week, and security has been bolstered at many of the nearly 100,000 US polling stations.
Nineteen states have enacted election security enhancement laws since 2020, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The new layers of security follow the election chaos from 2020, particularly after Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021, aiming to halt certification of the election results that confirmed Joe Biden as the winner.
