Donald Trump and top allies such as the multibillionaire Elon Musk have created a blizzard of false voting misinformation portraying Democrats as bent on stealing the election, undermining trust in the voting process and leading to potential violence, voting experts and ex-federal prosecutors say.
To sow doubt about the integrity of the election and reprising his 2020 playbook of claiming that Democrats were trying to steal the election before he lost to Joe Biden and cried fraud, Trump has flatly and without evidence declared that Democrats are a “bunch of cheats”.
Similarly, Trump has baselessly charged that Kamala Harris could only win “if it was a corrupt election”.
The social media platform X, owned by Musk, who has donated over $120m to a Super Pac backing Trump with get-out-the-vote efforts in Pennsylvania and other swing states, has become a leading purveyor of falsehoods and conspiracies to his 200 million followers, say critics.
Musk, the world’s richest man with a fortune close to $260bn, has asserted without evidence that Trump’s campaign is heading for a “crushing victory” over Harris, and been chastised by key election officials in Arizona and Georgia for allowing X to disseminate false claims of election cheating by Democrats and phoney voting problems.
Bill Gates, a top election official from Maricopa county, Arizona, told the Guardian: “Elon Musk has made a number of false claims about Maricopa county that I and other officials have responded to. Given that Musk has such a large platform it’s of particular concern to us.”
Election experts warn that the growing volume of misinformation and false charges of Democratic voting fraud involving non-citizens, mail-in ballots, voting machines and more has grown rapidly and is increasingly hard to combat.
“When Musk bought Twitter and rebranded it as X, he complained that it had been unfairly censoring conservative viewpoints and he wanted to make it an uncensored marketplace of ideas,” the ex-Federal Election Commission general counsel Larry Noble told the Guardian.
“It now appears that Musk is using his wealth and ability to reach hundreds of millions of followers with lies and debunked conspiracy theories about how elections are being administered.
“Now that he has fully and openly embraced Trump, he has joined Trump and his other minions in spreading the claim that the only way Trump can lose the upcoming election is if there is widespread fraud. Of course, they are already claiming, without credible evidence, that election fraud is already taking place.”
Other election experts voice similar concerns.
“Trump allies appear to be spreading a myth among his supporters that his election is inevitable, a landslide,” said David Becker who runs the non-partisan Center for Election Innovation and Research.
“Given all the data available, it’s clear this race is very close, and no reasonable person should be surprised if either candidate wins. But if Harris wins, this strategy will likely amplify the sense of shock among many of Trump’s supporters, which could increase the chances of violence.”
Just last Thursday on his Truth Social platform, Trump said, “We caught them CHEATING BIG in Pennsylvania” and quickly demanded criminal prosecutions in a case that appears to have been the result of some minor human errors that have been remedied, according to state officials.
At a Pennsylvania rally over the weekend in Lancaster county, Trump charged without evidence that “they are trying so hard to steal this damn thing … We should have one-day voting and paper ballots.”
X, too, has increasingly amplified false charges of voting fraud or problems in key states such as Arizona and Pennsylvania, including a fake video that election officials in Georgia have linked to Russia disinformation of a Haitian in the state claiming he had voted in a few different counties.
Besides Musk, other key Trump allies such as the Turning Point USA chief, Charlie Kirk, have used their large rightist audiences via podcasts and public events to push bogus claims about Democratic election fraud.
Former prosecutors and disinformation analysts say that the spread of baseless charges that Democrats are trying to steal the election for Harris carries grave risks.
“We live in a time when influencers can spread false narratives on social media platforms and podcasts. Without any regulation to check their behavior, Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, and others are using their platforms to promote false narratives,” said Barbara McQuade, a former federal prosecutor in eastern Michigan who wrote a book about disinformation entitled Attack from Within.
McQuade stressed: “We are seeing an orchestrated effort to undermine public confidence in the outcome of the election. There is no evidence that Republican strategies are coordinated with Russia efforts, but their interests align.”
Likewise, other ex-prosecutors see evidence that Trump and his allies are poised to charge election fraud if he loses again as the “Stop the Steal” movement did.
“Trump’s efforts to undermine confidence in our election system, through baseless allegations of fraud, is one of the most dangerous things he has accomplished in his sustained assault on democracy,” said Michael Bromwich, a former inspector general at the Department of Justice. “His failure to overturn the 2020 election has not deterred him one bit from trying the same thing this year. This will have profound and long-term consequences on our political and legal systems.”
“The incidence of election fraud is vanishingly small, and yet Trump, aided by his anti-democratic allies, has managed to persuade a significant percentage of Americans that our elections are riddled with fraud. A mountain of facts to the contrary seems to have no effect. Like many other falsehoods spread by Trump and his allies, Trump’s claims of election fraud are spread by media ecosystems that shape the view of millions of people.”
Bromwich’s fears are underscored by how election officials in key swing states have been inundated with false claims of suspect voting or Democratic fraud.
Falsehoods about Democrats cheating or exaggerating early voting glitches in swing states such as Pennsylvania and Michigan have been growing with help from Trump and allies
Critics say that Musk’s X has been in the vanguard of amplifying false claims of fraud and fueling doubts about the security of voting. At the end of October, Musk told his followers to inform an “Election Integrity Community” on X about election problems, even though Musk’s pro-Trump America Pac oversees the feed, which included some claims of election cheating that state officials in Pennsylvania and Arizona had debunked.
Noble warns that democracy is endangered by false claims of election fraud by Trump and key allies.
“Musk’s efforts to undermine trust in the election are doing serious and possibly irreparable harm to our democracy. He is helping to bring what was once a fringe element of our politics into the mainstream and helping normalize irrational conspiracy theories and distrust in the legitimacy of our democracy.”
Further, Noble said that Musk’s “activities may be putting the safety and lives of election workers at risk by serving as justification for Trump’s followers to take aggressive and potentially violent acts against those trying to administer the election fairly”.
In Bromwich’s eyes, the deluge of falsehoods about Democrats seeking to steal the election is highly dangerous for election workers and democracy.
“One of the most disturbing results of Trump’s attacks on the integrity of our elections is the threat posed to election workers. Before Trump, election workers simply did not have to worry about threats to their safety and questions about their integrity. All that has changed because of Trump’s ability to marshal his supporters who support his unsupported claims of fraud based on fabricated allegations of cheating. It is a deeply disturbing development.”