Four years after an election filled with misinformation, Americans are facing a new wave of fake news about the Nov. 5 presidential election, with allegations of voter fraud or possible vote-counting irregularities.

“It was the same scenario in 2016 and 2020 and now 2024,” said Lisa Deeley, a member of the election commission in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, one of the swing states that will decide the outcome of the election.

While the Republican nominee Donald Trump and the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris are fighting chest to chest, the former US president has already claimed several times that the Democrats will allow immigrants to vote illegally in favor of his opponent.

According to a recent Bright Line Watch poll, conducted at the initiative of several universities, eight in ten Republicans have embraced this theory.

It’s the kind of misinformation reminiscent of the 2020 election, which was marred by allegations of cyberattacks on automatic voting machines, ballot boxes stuffed with ballots overnight, or dead votes counted properly.

These theories came to a head on January 6, 2021 with the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters who believed the Republican had won the election.

But the disinformation isn’t just about Republicans.

As Bright Line Watch reported in its survey, more than a third of Democrats believe that the assassination attempts on Trump were staged.

On November 5 and in the following days, experts expect a barrage of disinformation, images created through artificial intelligence or even premature announcements of victory.

“One element of misinformation is the false impression that we will know the winner on election night and that something will go wrong if we don’t,” said Justin Levittprofessor of law at Loyola Marymount University.

“These are just predictions. And if these predictions take a little longer, that’s not an indication that the election is rigged, it’s an indication that the election worked properly,” he added.

According to the Cyber ​​Security and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the 2020 presidential election was the most credible in US history.

Of the tens of millions of votes counted in the 2020 election and 2022 midterm elections, there were only a few dozen convictions for fraud, according to Heritage Foundation data.

The Brennan Center for Justice, which reviewed cases of fraud before 2020, also said they were rare.

People found guilty of this type of fraud have been sentenced to prison terms and fined millions of dollars.

“With all this attention now on the election, the idea of ​​widespread election fraud is pretty ridiculous,” commented MIT’s Charles Stewart.

Although each state has its own rules regarding elections, all have adopted strict security measures for each stage of voting.

In Maricopa County, Arizona, where Mr Joe Biden beat him Trump in 2020, signature on mail-in ballots is scrutinized first.

Then a bipartisan team “takes the ballot out of the envelope and gives it to us,” explained Deputy Director of Elections Jennifer Lewis. Also, those who vote before Election Day can track their vote “at every stage of the process,” he added.

As in other counties, authorities in the key state of Fulton, Georgia, are broadcasting the vote count live.

“We want to make sure that (…) the whole world knows that it is (a process) open to the public, that people can come, see things with their own eyes and not allow anyone to post fake videos,” she said. Nadine Williams Supervisor of Elections in Fulton.

To those who question the legality of the process, Dilly suggested that they take part in it, work as volunteers.

“Then they will be able to play a role in their democracy,” he explained.