Social media group amplifies false Georgia election claims

ATLANTA — Georgia election officials face an uphill battle against misinformation as an online community dedicated to tracking voter fraud is amplifying debunked allegations.

An online “Election Integrity Community,” created last month by Elon Musk’s America PAC on X, is designed to allow its more than 60,000 users to share suspicions of irregularities and voter fraud in this year’s election. Many posts repeat debunked claims of vote flipping, noncitizens casting ballots and other illegal or suspicious activity in Georgia and across the country.

“Safe and secure elections are essential to having a functioning republic,” a post from Musk’s America PAC states. “We have started an X community dedicated to sharing potential instances of voter fraud and irregularities that Americans are experiencing in the 2024 Election.”

America PAC is supporting former President Donald Trump’s voter turnout efforts, and Musk has appeared with Trump on the campaign trail.

Members of the Election Integrity Community last week reposted on X a video claiming Haitian immigrants were casting illegal ballots in multiple counties across metro Atlanta. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger issued a statement debunking the video, and several U.S. intelligence agencies issued a joint statement saying the false video appeared to be created by Russian internet trolls.

On social media, another false claim brought an annual cybersecurity conference in Atlanta to a halt. Online posts framed the Homeland Security Critical Infrastructure Conference’s “tabletop exercise,” scheduled on Election Day, as a potential cyber threat to this year’s presidential contest. U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and conservative activists within the X community amplified that message.

“I got a number of obscene messages. I got a number of messages that were concerning and certainly a few unhinged people,” said Paul Wertz, president of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association’s Atlanta chapter, who helped organize the conference. “And one of the guys that tweeted about it actually registered to come to the conference, and that started to ring some alarm bells.”

Wertz said it was a fundamental misunderstanding about what the event entailed. No official involved in this year’s election would have participated, and the event had nothing to do with the election. But no one spreading the misinformation called to clarify that.

He compared the tabletop exercise to a large group of people playing a game of Dungeons and Dragons.

“It’s somebody that leads the discussion and says, ‘How would you handle this?’ And you say, ‘How would you handle that?’ And then the group has input over the course of the day or half day,” Wertz said.

The two-day conference that federal, state and Fortune 500 companies flock to annually will now be scheduled after the presidential inauguration.

“There are guys out there that took things out of context and never called me, never reached out for any information,” Wertz said. “But they added words like ‘cybersecurity threat’ or ‘cybersecurity attacks,’ and they really kind of made it seem like much more than it was.”

Other disproved claims amplified by the online community create another job for election officials this year: discrediting false election fraud allegations.

Another claim spread with help from U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Rome, and circulated by the Election Integrity Community alleged voting machines were flipping votes from Donald Trump.

Greene’s allegations stemmed from a story of an early voter in Whitfield County who said one of his responses to a ballot question flipped his selection. Elections Supervisor Shaynee Bryson said it could be a user error and helped the voter cancel his ballot and fill out a new one.

Bryson said that since the incident no other Whitfield voter has alleged that votes were flipped. Afterward, Greene appeared to back off her claim and thanked the election office.

On the eve of Election Day, Raffensperger warned about the potential of misinformation and said he’d ensure that every legal ballot cast this year will count.

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