Please don't amplify conspiracy theories!

The reality is that it always takes time for some states to count all the votes; when these rumors started ramping up, there were over ten million uncounted ballots in California alone. But, many people don’t know that this is how things always work. So, with emotions high in the aftermath of the election, disinformation purveyors are taking advantage of the opportunity to get well-intentioned people to help amplify conspiracy theories.

If you see allegations of “millions of missing votes” or voting machine fraud, please don’t amplify them! Instead:

  • If it’s somebody you know, send them a private message letting them know that they’re unintentionally amplifying a false rumor.

  • If it’s not somebody you know, report it to the moderators as disinformation.

  • ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.world
    64·
    4 days ago

    I’m only wondering about the statistically improbable break between the state where they voted all Dems downballot but then swapped to Trump just for President.

    This is so statistically unlikely, having one or two states this way would be improbable as hell, but (I am not claiming this is true) there are apparently many instances where this happened.

    I’m not sharing any of this stuff I see but so far this is the one that got my eyebrow raised.

    • Eldritch@lemmy.worldEnglish
      45·
      4 days ago

      Missouri voted to legalize abortion again. Then elected the man who will get it banned nationally. Previously we voted to reduce dark money etc in local elections. And in the very next election repealed those restrictions again. People are fucking ignorant. Those in the state of misery doubly so.

      • FoxyFerengi@lemm.ee
        15·
        3 days ago

        Montana voted red all the way down except to protect abortion. Just last year they had kids argue to the state Supreme Court that they have rights when it comes to the environment, and they won.

        I have no idea what is up or down anymore

    • pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.online
      33·
      4 days ago

      I fully believe that the Rs pulled some sort of shady shit with ballots. For them ‘every accusation is a confession’ is an immutable law.

      It doesn’t matter, though, because the people who could do anything about it are on his team.

      • Soulg@sh.itjust.works
        9·
        3 days ago

        Completely agree. They said for months they had a better plan, Trump and Johnson had their little secret, elections have taken days in the past several yet this one ends almost immediately.

        I completely believe that it could be legit, but I absolutely think that they managed to do something. And as you said, doesn’t fucking matter even if they did.

        • aesthelete@lemmy.world
          1·
          3 days ago

          elections have taken days in the past several yet this one ends almost immediately.

          Not in the past several, in the last one where the whole country had pretty universal vote by mail abilities.

          Now it takes a while to count the vote in places like California which still have universal vote by mail, and the returns are near instant in other areas that used the “voter fraud” narratives to eliminate or drastically scale back their vote by mail initiatives.

    • The Nexus of PrivacyOP
      10·
      3 days ago

      It’s true that downballot Dems ran ahead of Harris in most states. Why do you think it’s statistically unlikely? Polls ahead of the election showed downballot Dems were more popular than Harris. Republicans focused most of their negative campaigning on Harris. Biden’s very unpopular and she didn’t try to distance herself from him (I’m not saying that she should have, I’m just observing that she didn’t). Sexists and racists were less likely to vote for Harris.

    • Rhaedas@fedia.io
      12·
      4 days ago

      I had suggested to people before that if you are not going to vote for President, at least vote down the ballot for local people and don’t discard the whole election. Voting Democrat but then for Trump does seem very odd.

      • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 days ago

        That actually makes a lot of sense. Trump didn’t get significantly more votes than he got in 2020. Harris just got way less than Harris.

    • usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml
      1·
      4 days ago

      That’s assuming that all Trump supporters vote down ballot. I’ve been reading that a non-negligable percentage of Trump voters just voted for president and left down ballot races blank. Considering Trump only won the swing states by tiny percentages, a small percentage of Trump voters leaving blank the rest is easily enough to sway it

      For instance, if we look at Wisconsin senate, we see that Tammy Baldwin has almost exactly the same number of votes as Harris (only a couple hundred more), but Eric Hovde shows less substantially votes than Trump got

      Results with ~99% reported:

      Donald Trump: 1,697,769

      Kamala Harris: 1,668,082

      (And about 40k for third party)

      Vs senate

      Tammy Baldwin: 1,668,545 [+436 from Harris]

      Eric Hovde: 1,641,181 [-56,615 from Trump]