She Won -- article on rigged 2024 election, with remedy actions

[Celerity]

92. Using Conspiracy Theories to Make Sense of a Loss

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/articles/using-conspiracy-theories-to-make-sense-of-a-loss



Further reading:

“Election Conspiracy Theories Are for Everyone,” by Anna Merlan

“The 200-Year History of Using Voter Fraud Fears to Block Access to the Ballot,” by Pema Levy

Election Denial Conspiracy Theories Are Exploding on X. This Time They’re Coming From the Left

Conspiracy theories about missing votes—which are not, in fact, missing—and something being “not right” are being spread widely on X in the wake of Donald Trump’s election victory.

https://www.wired.com/story/election-denial-conspiracy-theories-x-left-blueanon/

https://archive.ph/p1DEg

It took just minutes for the conspiracy theories about the 2024 US presidential election to flood Elon Musk’s X platform after Donald Trump was announced as the winner in the early hours of Wednesday morning. The number of posts casting doubt on the election results and calling for a recount exploded on Wednesday morning, according to data from research company PeakMetrics. At noon Eastern time, posts on centibillionaire Elon Musk’s X platform peaked at 94,000 posts per hour. Many of the posts received significant amplification on X, with numerous posts reviewed by WIRED receiving more than 1 million views. “How can we have had record turnout and twenty million fewer votes cast nationally?” author John Pavlovitz wrote in a post viewed 5.3 million times.

Gordon Crovitz, the CEO of NewsGuard, told WIRED that the term “Trump cheated” was trending on X on Wednesday morning. “There are 92,100 mentions of ‘Trump cheated’ on X since midnight,” Crovitz said. The exact details of the conspiracy theories are still being ironed out by those promoting them, but for the Harris supporters sharing them, her loss was reason enough to indulge in pushing baseless disinformation about the election being stolen. Meanwhile, the massive pro-Trump election denial movement that sprung up in the wake of the 2020 election remained virtually silent on Wednesday morning, in comparison to the flood of content it shared in the days and weeks leading up to the election.

“It doesn't matter whether baseless allegations about voting irregularities come from the right or the left,” says Nina Jankowicz, the former Biden administration disinformation czar who is now CEO of the American Sunlight Project. “The impact on our system of these lies is the same: People will end up trusting the infrastructure of democracy less, setting us up for more disinformation and disengagement. These drop-offs in trust take decades to undo. Take a look at countries in Eastern Europe that have been attempting to rebuild trust in the system since the ‘90s. We should all be wary of these allegations, no matter their source.” The posts calling for a recount used a variety of hashtags including #donotconcedekamala and phrases like “math ain’t mathing.”

Many of them contained vague claims that “something is very off.” The one specific claim being made by many of these accounts suggests that there are 20 million “missing votes.” While at publication time the Associated Press’ vote count was indeed 16 million votes lower than that for the 2020 election, the explanation is trivially simple: The entirety of the vote hasn’t been tabulated yet. “Election denial is anti-democratic, whether it comes from the left or the right,” David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, wrote on X. “No, 20 million votes aren’t missing. Votes are still being counted in many states, including millions in CA alone. Number of votes in 2024 very close to 2020, when all are reported.”

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