As California’s September 14 election draws near, Gavin Newsom is rumored to be on the run.
Two of the most widely circulated online, how they are distributed and why, state and local officials are wrong.
Myth 1 – Holes in the ballot box were used to filter “yes” votes.
On August 19, a woman posted a video of herself posting on Instagram by posting her California special ballot in an envelope.
“You have to pay attention to these two envelopes,” she said, bringing the holes closer to the camera for viewers to see. You may see a person voting ‘yes’ to remember the news. In my opinion this is very subtle and irresponsible, but this requires fraud.
According to the New York Times, the ballot boxes were used to suppress the desire of Democratic Gov. Cabbage Newsom to spread the word online quickly.
California Memory Choice
Instagram video has garnered nearly half a million views. Posts claiming that California had rigged the special election on the Telegram messaging app have accumulated nearly 200,000 views. And an article on The Gateway Pandit on the right has reached 626,000 people on Facebook, according to CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned social media analytics tool.
Regional and local officials said the polling stations were not new and were not being used fraudulently. Jenna Dresner, a spokeswoman for the California Department of State’s Cyber Security Office, said the holes were lined with envelopes at both ends of the signature line.
The design of the ballot paper has been used for several election cycles, and civic design consultants have recommended the holes for accessibility, said Mike Sánchez, spokesman for the Los Angeles County Registrar. He said voters can choose to put the ballot paper in the ballot box in a way that never shows a voice.
Instagram added a real-time verification tag to the original video to see if it could mislead people afterwards. According to CrowdTangle, the actual check has reached 20,700 people.
Story 2 – Governor Newsom stole ballot papers to help him win the election.
On August 17, police in Toronto, California, posted a message on Facebook that they had received a call from a passenger in a parking lot in a parking lot. The man was carrying a firearm, drugs, and thousands of envelopes, and more than 300 ballot boxes, including ballot papers, were confiscated, police said.
Right-wing sites such as Red Voice Media and Conservative Fringe said the incident was an attempt by Democrats to send the election by mail. According to CrowdTangle, their articles were shared on Facebook and reached 1.57 million people.
Mark Ponegalek, a public information officer with the Torres Police Department, said the investigation was ongoing. The U.S. Post Inspectorate also took part, and no conclusions were reached.
As a result, he said online articles and posts concluding that the man was trying to defraud voters were “baseless.”
“I have no indication that I will tell you one way or the other,” he said. He added that the man may have intended to commit an identity fraud.