These are some conspiracy theories that will be heard during the elections

() — In 2016, a machine apparently blocked a vote for Donald Trump. In 2018, a video allegedly showed the change of votes. In 2020, a video purported to show burned ballots.

It all ended up being fake, and none of these situations showed what they claimed to show, but in those election days before and the days after they racked up millions of views, clicks, and shares on social media.

This election day, the one in 2022, when tens of millions of people vote on a continent and its territories abroad, not everything can go well.

However, the vast majority of Americans will do their civic duty and vote without issue. But in the age of social media and a concerted effort by some to undermine faith in American elections, it is the irregularities that often draw attention.

There are different types of falsehoods that go viral on Election Day – this is where the difference between misinformation and misinformation comes into play. Misinformation is false information that the creator or sharer does not necessarily know is false. Disinformation is the deliberate creation and sharing of false information.

wrong information

An example of misinformation is a 12-second video that was widely shared on Election Day 2016. A man in Pennsylvania tweeted a video that he said, showed a voting machine that did not allow him to vote for then-candidate Trump repeatedly pressing a button for Trump, but the selection on the machine still said Clinton.

The video spread like wildfire on Twitter; some held it up as evidence of a widespread anti-Trump fraud problem in Pennsylvania. But it was not like that. (BTW, Trump won the state)

spoke with the man who posted the video. He explained that the problem he was having with the machine was quickly resolved when he asked a poll worker for help.

Election judges elsewhere in Pennsylvania explained that people who might have accidentally pressed a candidate’s button first would have to press that button again to deselect the candidate before choosing another.

That is exactly what appears to have happened to this man. When his tweet blew up and became the talk of the internet, he posted: “Everyone keep trying to tell me I said the machine was rigged and I never said that it was weird how it happened.”

Disinformation

Then there are the more cynical things. It’s not just a confused voter posting on social media and inadvertently causing more confusion.

On Election Day 2020, a video surfaced online purporting to show a person setting fire to a bag full of ballots marked Trump.

The video was a hoax and had been debunked by fact-checkers on Election Day, but it continued to circulate online and the next day, the then-president’s son, Eric Trump, retweeted a version of the video that had around 1.2 million views.

While Eric Trump probably didn’t know the video was fake, the people who created and staged the video were involved in producing disinformation.

To do?

Take a breath before spreading conspiracy theories about the election

The old maxim: “A lie can travel around the world and back while the truth laces up its boots” is never truer than on Election Day.

Videos, tweets, Facebook and WhatsApp posts alleging all sorts of things are going to surface, and in a super-charged political environment, we may want to believe them, even share them.

There will also be many false claims about the vote counting process. Some will say that the failure to report all results on election night is evidence that something fishy is going on: Election officials have repeatedly warned that in some cases the counting process can take days, not hours.

Newsrooms will be available to separate fact from fiction, but that may take time. When investigated the Pennsylvania machine that supposedly wouldn’t allow voting for Trump in 2016, we had to find out where the video was shot, try to talk to election officials who work at that polling place, talk to state election officials and talk to the person who posted the video. Meanwhile, the video accumulated thousands of visits.

What is different between 2016 and now? There is a much more sophisticated machinery designed to undermine your confidence in American elections. So we could see a lot of misinformation this Election Day.

And remember…

None of this is to say that there won’t be some irregularities and attempted fraud. This Election Day, has literally hundreds of people dedicated to researching voting issues.

When election officials get it wrong, we’ll report it (as we did Saturday in Georgia). When there are serious reports of fraud, we will report on that too (as we did Thursday in Wisconsin).

The American electoral process is imperfect. There are tens of thousands of different cities, counties, and municipalities in all 50 states and multiple territories that play a role in administering elections, most of them doing things a little differently. There are different machines for casting and counting votes, there are different local electoral laws and procedures. There will be confusion, there will be mistakes.

But there are also thousands of dedicated election officials and volunteers who work tirelessly to ensure our elections are free and fair. Don’t let a few viral videos undermine your trust in them.