WASHINGTON: Four years after a US presidential race awash with misinformation, Americans face more of the same in the closing weeks of this year's campaign, with claims about ballot irregularities and fraud likely to dominate.
With conspiracy theories already bubbling in the too-close-to-call contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, the vote count is expected to take days, giving oxygen to online rancor about the electoral process.
Social media users in states such as Texas are already misrepresenting early voting machine errors as evidence of wrongdoing. Republican former president Trump has also repeatedly accused Democrats of importing migrants to vote illegally for Harris on Election Day, November 5.
That narrative has gained massive traction, adding to years of election denialism after 2020, when Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden but insisted falsely and against all evidence that he had won - a baseless claim he continues to make today.
Despite being repeatedly debunked, eight in 10 Republicans endorse the notion that undocumented immigrants could help put Harris in the White House, according to a recent survey from the multi-university Bright Line Watch initiative.
"It's the same playbook from 2016 and then again in 2020 and now 2024," said Lisa Deeley, vice chair of the Philadelphia City Commissioners in the state of Pennsylvania, which has faced a barrage of misinformation.
Adding to the noise is a string of fake celebrity endorsements, deceptively edited videos of campaign events and satire passed off as real news.
Conspiracy theories about two assassination attempts against Trump during the campaign also abound, with more than a third of Democrats believing they were staged, according to Bright Line Watch.
The 2020 election was marred by false claims of hacked voting machines, dead people voting and illegal overnight ballot dumps, culminating in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters.
Despite no courts, audits or recounts surfacing evidence of widespread fraud, experts say this time they expect a deluge of similar falsehoods and AI-generated visuals, as well as premature declarations of victory.
"One piece of misinformation that is absolutely predictable is the false impression that we should know on election night who won and there is something wrong if we don't," said Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University.
"The predictions that you get are really only that. And if those predictions take a while longer, it's not a sign that the election's broken - it's a sign that the election's working."
'Kind of laughable'
The last presidential election was the most secure in American history, according to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Of the tens of millions of ballots cast in 2020 and during midterm elections in 2022, there have been only a few dozen criminal fraud convictions, according to a database maintained by the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Studies compiled by the Brennan Center for Justice, which reviewed fraud cases before 2020, also found wrongdoing is uncommon.
Americans who do commit such crimes face harsh penalties, such as fines of thousands of dollars or even prison time.
"With all the scrutiny on elections these days, the idea that there would be widespread voter fraud is kind of laughable," said Charles Stewart, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Election Lab.
Safeguarding the vote
While each state makes its own election rules, all have security measures at each step of the voting process.
In Arizona's Maricopa County, which Biden won back from Republicans in 2020, absentee ballots undergo rigorous signature verification.
"From there, we have bipartisan teams who then extract the ballot from the envelope, and that's what gives us the secret ballot," Deputy Elections Director Jennifer Liewer told AFP. Those who vote early can track their ballot "every step of the way."
There are strict chain-of-custody procedures for ballots, and many jurisdictions livestream the count - including Fulton County, Georgia, another swing state flashpoint.
"We want to make sure things are open, that the public knows what's open to the public - that they can come and see those things and not let somebody else post a video with false narratives," said Nadine Williams, the county's director of registration and elections.
For those who still doubt the process, Deeley of the Philadelphia City Commissioners recommends getting more involved by volunteering as a poll worker.
"Then they can take part in their own democracy," she said.
