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Unproven Fraud Claims Seen in State Races Could Cloud 2020

Associated Press

   WASHINGTON - As Kentucky's Republican governor trailed by thousands of
   votes in his re-election bid and Democrats took the reins of the
   Virginia Statehouse, social media posts offered an unsubstantiated
   explanation for the Election Day results: voter fraud.

   The messages seized on small-scale voting issues or pushed inaccurate
   reports to call into question all the election results.

   Thousands of dead people voted, some claimed. So many Virginia voters
   were turned away or given misprinted ballots that the results were
   suspect, a conservative pundit speculated. One Twitter user suggested
   that the entire state of Kentucky had purchased new voting machines
   that led to sweeping errors.

   The online responses provide a glimpse into the type of misinformation
   that could cloud next year's presidential race and might intensify if
   the election is close, said Charles Stewart III, a professor at the
   Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has studied public confidence
   in elections.

   "At best, it would undermine public confidence and at worst lead to
   violence and a refusal to accept the results of the election,'' Stewart
   said. ``People are practicing for the 2020 election. I hope they
   realize they're playing with fire."

   Such unsupported theories alleging massive election fraud have become
   an online rallying cry in the wake of close contests. President Donald
   Trump has at times led those cries.

   "In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the
   popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,"
   Trump said in a tweet days after his 2016 victory.

   Trump has repeated the idea but never provided any evidence of
   widespread fraud. He has also amplified false assertions of fraud after
   votes in California, Arizona, Texas and Florida, among other states.

   Actual reports of voter fraud nationwide remain extremely rare, and the
   president's own now-disbanded voting integrity commission failed to
   uncover any evidence of extensive election misconduct.

   Meanwhile, Democrats have routinely suggested Stacey Abrams lost a
   close gubernatorial election last year in Georgia only because of voter
   suppression, despite record turnout.

   Many of the fraud claims surrounding last week's elections in Kentucky
   and Virginia were magnified by accounts that describe themselves as
   supporters of the president. In a statement, Twitter said that the
   company "saw low-level attempts to spread misinformation primarily
   driven by organic, authentic conversation."

   Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin himself seeded distrust by alleging, without
   evidence, that ``irregularities'' plagued last week's vote. He has
   requested a recanvass of the results, which currently show him losing
   by 5,000 votes to Democrat Andy Beshear, the state attorney general.
   The review is set for Thursday.

   Officials in both states have said the elections experienced only minor
   disruptions that would not have altered the outcomes.

   As of Wednesday, Kentucky's Election Day hotline had received 123
   calls, up from 79 during the last gubernatorial race in 2015, when
   voter turnout was lower. Last year during the midterm elections, the
   hotline received more than 500 calls.

   Voting officials said the complaints were not out of the ordinary.

   "The nature of the calls during this cycle were typical of the calls
   received in previous cycles," Deputy Attorney General J. Michael Brown
   said in a statement to The Associated Press.

   Even some Kentucky Republicans challenged Bevin to provide proof.

   "You have to show, in order to overturn an election, that you have the
   goods,'' GOP state Rep. Jason Nemes said Thursday during a radio
   interview. ``And it doesn't look like we have them."

   In Virginia, where Democrats took control of both chambers of the state
   Legislature for first time in more than two decades, officials reported
   that a handful of precincts in Stafford County received the wrong
   ballots. Some precincts in Prince William County distributed misprinted
   ballots. The issues lasted, in some cases, a matter of minutes and are
   being investigated.

   "These were very isolated instances," said Chris Piper, commissioner
   for the Virginia Department of Elections.

   Still, falsehoods about voting in Kentucky and Virginia have continued
   to circulate for days on platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and
   Twitter, in part because they have been promoted by popular social
   media accounts with large followings.

   One Twitter user shared a screenshot of a Kentucky radio station news
   article that said the state was poised to get new voting machines,
   tagging Trump in the tweet.

   "First election since Kentucky implemented new voting machines & ODDLY
   enough the entire state turns blue," read the tweet, sent from a
   verified account.

   The article, however, was written at least 15 years ago, WFPL reporter
   Rick Howlett in Louisville confirmed to the AP. No mass overhaul of
   Kentucky's voting equipment has occurred. In fact, efforts to secure
   federal money for new machines across the state have been fruitless.

   Hundreds of social media users also shared a screenshot of a tweet sent
   from the misspelled location of "Louiville." It read, in part, ``just
   shredded a box of Republican mail in ballots.'' The account has since
   been suspended by Twitter, and the tweet has been referred to federal
   law enforcement agencies, according to Kentucky Secretary of State
   spokeswoman Lillie Ruschell.

   Other posts used the election results themselves as evidence for fraud,
   questioning how the state's Republican governor could lose an election
   when the GOP successfully swept the other statewide offices.

   "Voter fraud in Kentucky? ... There is no way the people who voted for
   the first 3 didn't vote for the GOP governor," one Twitter user wrote
   in a post shared thousands of times.

   These fraud allegations are nearly impossible to verify because they do
   not provide any details, said Loyola Law School professor Justin
   Levitt. He has tracked voter ID fraud cases since 2000, verifying 45
   cases over nearly two decades. Levitt said he's noticed an increase in
   claims of voter crimes that provide few specifics or simply express
   dissatisfaction with the results.

   "When we no longer abide electoral losses but claim that every loss is
   the product of a system that's unfair, that means we're no longer
   willing to tolerate changes of power based on people who disagree with
   us," Levitt said. "That is toxic."