Halloween night, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger released a warning to voters: Social media posts may include disinformation from foreign sources.
This came after he announced that Georgia exceeded 50% statewide turnout among active voters, with 3,653,333 Georgians having cast ballots, 3,426,851 of those voting early as of Thursday.
“Earlier today, our office became aware of a video purporting to show a Haitian immigrant with multiple Georgia ID’s claiming to have voted multiple times,” he wrote.
“This is false and is an example of targeted disinformation we’ve seen in this and other elections. It is likely foreign interference attempting to sow discord and chaos on the eve of the 2024 Presidential election,” he said.
The viral video alleging voting fraud in Georgia, claiming a Haitian immigrant has voted multiple times in the sate, had spread widely across social media sites, including X, by Thursday evening.
“This is obviously fake and part of a disinformation effort,” Raffensperger wrote. He made the assumption that the post could be the product of “Russian troll farms.”
That assumption was later supported by various agencies, including the FBI:
The Russians picked the wrong Georgians to mess with. https://t.co/EBV26PJyTX
— GA Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (@GaSecofState) November 1, 2024
The rapid sharing of the post prompted Raffensperger to ask Elon Musk to take the post down.
“We are working to combat this and identify the origin of it with our state and federal partners,” Raffensperger said. “CISA is currently investigating. In the meantime, we ask Elon Musk and the leadership of other social media platforms to take this down.”
“As Americans we can’t let our enemies use lies to divide us and undermine our faith in our institutions,” he said. “Or each other.”
The Associated Press reported that election officials nationwide are fighting a “tsunami” of misinformation, as “a resurgence in conspiracy theories about voting is forcing state and local election officials to spend their time debunking rumors and explaining how elections are run at the same time they’re overseeing early voting and preparing for Nov. 5.”
Last week, Gabriel Sterling, COO of the Georgia secretary of state’s office, fought another theory that was spreading about voting machines.
“There is zero evidence of a machine flipping an individual’s vote,” he said. “Are there elderly people whose hands shake and they probably hit the wrong button slightly and they didn’t review their ballot properly before they printed it? That’s the main situation we have seen. There is literally zero — and I’m saying this to certain congresspeople in this state — zero evidence of machines flipping votes. That claim was a lie in 2020 and it’s a lie now.”
This was after U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene “claimed a voting machine had changed a voter’s ballot in her Georgia district during early voting, and Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of the social media platform X, promoted various conspiracy theories about voting machines and voter fraud both online and at a rally for Trump,” the AP wrote.
NPR has created the Untangling Disinformation portal to help voters understand disinformation and how to avoid falling for fake claims.
Raffensperger stands by his assertion that Georgia is one of the most secure states in which to vote.
This article comes to Now Habersham in partnership with GPB News
