STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Millions of Americans have already voted in this year's election. Others are preparing to vote, and some people are spreading concerns about their experiences.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Yeah, some anxiety comes amid Democratic concerns about being turned away from the polls. A lot of it centers on Republican preparations to challenge the results if they lose. Now, before we get into the conspiracy theories, let's note the basic facts. U.S. elections are run by thousands of separate jurisdictions, a bipartisan system that no one person controls. The 2020 election was upheld through all challenges. Many states have updated their election rules since then, and election officials have spent four years preparing for this very moment.
INSKEEP: NPR's Huo Jingnan covers how false narratives are spreading as we vote. Good morning.
HUO JINGNAN, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: She's in our studios here, Studio 31, in Washington, D.C. What are you seeing?
HUO: So I'm seeing this massive effort from people on social media to collect and report suspicious incidents and framing them as a coordinated effort to steal the election again. I spoke with Kate Starbird about this. She tracks election rumors at the University of Washington, and she says there is a whole audience that have been told by their leaders and by former President Trump that the 2020 election was stolen. And that audience interprets every incident they see and hear about that way.
KATE STARBIRD: They go looking for evidence to support this feeling that they already have, that they can't trust results.
HUO: So this time, these Trump supporters feel that they need to safeguard the vote. And one of the ways they're trying to do this is by collecting evidence of supposed voter fraud.
INSKEEP: OK. So what does that evidence-gathering look like?
HUO: A lot of it looks like first-person accounts of people running into mistakes or things they didn't expect - things when people are voting early, knocking on doors or working as poll watchers. By all accounts, the mistakes, where they happened, were promptly corrected. If the ballot printout doesn't match how people wanted to put it, they were able to fill it out again.
INSKEEP: OK.
HUO: The unexpected things, like, you know, having - finding many people registered at the same address - there are explanations to that. And as far as we have seen, the system is working as it should. But people already suspicious still saw all of these as proof that the voting system is unreliable, and these incidents are being collected online in long lists by Trump allies. For example, Elon Musk's super PAC set up a group on his platform X, formerly known as Twitter, and people are busy posting stories there. And Steve, I wanted to point out that, you know, just two days ago, that community, that group, had 10,000 people. And now, as of this morning, it now has 50,000.
INSKEEP: Ten thousand up to 50,000 in a very short period of time. So what kind of themes emerge when you look at these communities?
HUO: So we see a remix of old villains from the 2020 election - voting machines, drop boxes. The theories of, like, all of these things have been disproven in courts. But this year, a big narrative is that noncitizens are voting in large numbers, that outsiders are wreaking havoc on the democratic process. To be clear, there have been incidents of noncitizens voting illegally, but it happens in very small numbers, and there's no sign that it has affected elections' results. Also, the penalties for doing so are very severe.
INSKEEP: OK. So what is the cumulative effect of gathering all of these claims and concerns and evidence, things that may have happened, but they're taken out of context?
HUO: It is building an impression that voter fraud is everywhere, when, in fact, it is very rare and usually caught quickly by authorities. I've got to say that this laundry list of claims on X is very overwhelming to look at. It is very dense, and lots of it appears to be technical. But the impression is just one aspect of it. Like all of these materials, they lay the groundwork for Trump supporters to contest the results in lawsuits if they don't like it, just like what we saw four years ago. But the difference is that this time, the challengers are geared up, and they're ready to go.
INSKEEP: NPR's Huo Jingnan. Thanks so much.
HUO: Thank you.
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