As Kentucky’s Republican governor trailed by thousands of votes in his re-election bid and Democrats took the reins of the Virginia Statehouse, social media posts offered an unsubstantiated explanation for the Election Day results: voter fraud.
The messages seized on small-scale voting issues or pushed inaccurate reports to call into question all the election results.
Thousands of dead people voted, some claimed. So many Virginia voters were turned away or given misprinted ballots that the results were suspect, a conservative pundit speculated. One Twitter user suggested that the entire state of Kentucky had purchased new voting machines that led to sweeping errors.
The online responses provide a glimpse into the type of misinformation that could cloud next year’s presidential race and might intensify if the election is close, said Charles Stewart III, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has studied public confidence in elections.
“At best, it would undermine public confidence and at worst lead to violence and a refusal to accept the results of the election,” Stewart said. “People are practicing for the 2020 election. I hope they realize they’re playing with fire.”