Tomorrow is Election Day, which means you’ve likely seen concerns about election interference, election security, and even outright disinformation about how elections are being conducted across the country and in Texas.
Despite then President Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, the courts, election officials, audits, and many studies have shown that election fraud is actually exceedingly rare. That hasn’t stopped many—including elected officials—from casting doubts by spreading rumors about voting machines, ballots, or even who is voting. Texas is not immune to the phenomenon. Attorney General Ken Paxton’s voter fraud unit closed 16 minor cases after spending more than 22,000 staff hours investigating claims of fraud.
Teams from the Secretary of State’s office and the Texas Attorney General’s office have checked the voting systems in Dallas County three times so far. Once is the usual number for logic and accuracy (or L&A) tests, but Dallas County Republican Chair Allen West continues to question the veracity of the results of the upcoming election. West later issued a press release reiterating his claims that the county’s voting machines repeatedly failed tests, prompting Paxton to post on social media that the press release was “premature and contains several inaccuracies.”
A report provided by the Secretary of State’s office explained that one machine produced an inaccurate result, and the county’s investigation determined that one machine had a different version of the software that was in use, causing a mismatch in results. A change to the ballot format also accounted for an error, because it changed the way it would be read through the scanner. The county was able to show its work, and both state agencies and representatives from both parties signed off on the subsequent test and examination of the county’s materials from the first test.
Christina Adkins, who oversees the state’s elections in the Secretary of State’s office, told the state senate Committee on State Affairs last month that her office inspected the systems, replicated the issue, and verified the county’s findings. The inspectors ran three L&A tests in all, Adkins told lawmakers. On the third test, scanners were selected at random by the parties. “These were scanners that could be deployed in the election,” she said. Ballots then were marked by the party representatives, and the results were hand tallied before being sent through the scanners. “In that process there were no identified issues,” she said.
State Sen. Nathan Johnson, who was present at the third test, said the rise of disinformation has caused some voters to question how accurate elections really are. “It’s apparent to me there are citizens who have been fed years of disinformation,” he said. “And they now believe what they were told and are sincerely concerned about the integrity of this election. And they will tell you, perhaps honestly, that it’s not partisan. They think everybody should be as concerned as they are about whether or not this machine gets unplugged and we plugged it in at the right time or whatever. There are people out there who are now genuinely scared the elections are subject to manipulation.”
Dallas County Elections Administrator Heider Garcia released a 19-page document that details every step—and most of the people in charge—of this election. It covers everything from storing the early votes to how tabulation works on election night and more. It also outlines some of the security measures in place for the election, including live stream video of the central count station and the area where election hardware is stored.
Despite reassurances and multiple tests, many will continue to question the election. Just last night, 60 Minutes tackled election misinformation. The New York Times published an excellent rundown of many of the untrue assertions that have been made about election integrity, too.
But why do people believe these claims, even after they’ve been debunked? And with so much information out there—from social media to unproven media outlets that have propagated to seemingly spread disinformation and half truths—how do you become a responsible consumer of information? We talked to Asheley Landrum, an associate professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. Landrum, who has a Ph.D., has studied extensively what makes people process information the way they do—and why it can make anyone susceptible to believing misinformation.
How does misinformation about an event or news happen?
Misinformation can happen in a million (I’m exaggerating) different ways. When an event occurs (whether it be extreme ones like a terrorist attack or innocuous ones like a play in a football game) misinformation can be shared as a result of misperceptions/misinterpretations, rumors and speculation about why something occurred (where the speculation is treated as truth), and intentional disinformation created to propagate a desirable narrative. For instance, the “Haitian immigrants eating pets” narrative started off as speculation about why a neighbor’s cat was missing. That was then repeated by political party leaders to increase support for (and attention to) a problem that they see as critical (immigration), which was then accepted and believed by people who are receptive to claims about horrible acts carried out by immigrants (e.g., confirmation bias).
Does the fact that there are some verifiable facts make it more difficult to determine what is fact and what is fiction?
When there is a little nugget of truth in a claim, it is sometimes more difficult to discredit the claim completely. One reason for this might be explained by something called Fuzzy Trace Theory. That is, we have two types of memory traces when we experience an event: verbatim and gist. Verbatim traces encode exact details and gist traces encode the overall meaning or feeling of an event. People are forgiving of misinformation that they feel has the gist right, even if the verbatim details are wrong. So, take reports of the death toll in Gaza. Officials have argued what sources should be considered as credible for counting the death toll, the health ministry, the government media office, or the estimates provided by Israel. Regardless of the exact numbers, which are overestimated or underestimated, the gist is that there are “a lot.”
When people believe and share information that isn’t entirely factual (or sometimes fact at all) it’s easy to write them off as being irrational. Can you talk about that a bit? Why is that a mistake?
As we navigate our daily lives, we constantly gather bits of information. Some of this comes from our own experiences, while other insights are drawn from the testimonies of those around us. The content we consume through television and various media sources further enriches this data. Together, these experiences shape our understanding of the world. When we encounter new claims, we evaluate them against our existing knowledge and beliefs. If these claims align with what we already know, we’re likely to accept them as true; if they seem implausible, we may dismiss them as unreliable.
So if someone wants to be a responsible consumer of information, what are some things they should do?
Here’s a few things that I recommend that also come from the course that I teach on media literacy at ASU: It’s okay to be uncertain. Accept that it is okay to not have all the answers right away. Sometimes you have to wait to get all of the necessary information and give those who are investigating it a minute to verify what is true and what is false. Being comfortable with waiting can lead to later holding more accurate beliefs.
Trust credible sources. This is a tough one because not everyone agrees with who is credible. Some folks will evaluate a source as credible because it says things that are consistent with their ideology (and not because of evidence regarding bias and reliability). I highly recommend looking at the Ad Fontes media bias chart and examining the sources you typically use. What I like about this is that Ad Fontes rates sources not only on left-right political bias but also on reliability. If a source skews right or left but is highly reliable, that’s still a good source of news. Ad Fontes makes their methods for determining bias and reliability very clear on their website. Another source you can use to try to get a clearer picture is AllSides. They also have a media bias chart, but it mostly focuses on left to right bias. More interestingly, they group news stories and present the headlines across media outlets so you can see how outlets from the left, right, and center are presenting news.
Act like a fact checker: Did you just see a notification that a celebrity died? Was it a real media outlet or a bot on Instagram? Check another, more trusted source to verify. In media literacy, this known as the SIFT method: Stop, Investigate the source, Find better coverage, and Trace claims, quotes, and media to their original context.
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