On Tuesday, as voters in New Hampshire solid their ballots within the state’s major, WIRED adopted the exercise of 1 on-line group of election-deniers who spent the day spreading wild conspiracies and outrage.
Within the New Hampshire Voter Integrity Fb group, members have been satisfied of election fraud inside minutes of the polls opening on Tuesday morning.
“Corruption already beginning,” one member wrote underneath a publish about somebody listening to that voting machines in Newton weren’t working. ”All the time dishonest,” one other added.
All through the day, in dozens of posts and a whole lot of feedback, the group’s members posted messages of assist for one another’s efforts, reaffirming one another’s beliefs within the conspiracies regardless of no precise proof of fraud.
There are over 6,500 members within the group, they usually have been all inspired by the group’s founder to finish seven duties all through the day to make sure election safety, together with demanding info from ballot staff, logging any discrepancies they arrive throughout, and monitoring whether or not everybody was being requested to supply ID when checking in to polling websites.
With the 2024 election on the horizon and former president Donald Trump as soon as once more on the poll, the group is getting ready for battle—and Tuesday was only a glimpse into what to anticipate in teams like these throughout the nation come November, when the election takes place.
Based in February 2021 by Marylyn Todd, the New Hampshire Voter Integrity group rapidly gained traction as Trump and plenty of inside the Republican social gathering have been pushing false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
Over the previous few years, Todd and the directors of the group have continued to push baseless conspiracies and wild allegations about voter fraud throughout the 2020 election—regardless of a number of authorities companies confirming it was the most secure and most safe election in US historical past. Todd has shared her views on quite a few right-wing exhibits, together with Mike Lindell’s Frank TV.
Although the group claims to be an election integrity group and never candidate particular, the overwhelming majority of these posting and commenting throughout the major have been celebrating Trump’s victory over former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, and had, within the hours earlier than the outcomes have been introduced, flagged issues about what they noticed as potential efforts to undermine Trump’s marketing campaign.
The primary main controversy to crop up on Tuesday was the conclusion that not all of the ballots throughout the state have been the identical and that Trump’s identify was not listed in the identical place on each one.
There was plenty of confusion about why this occurred, however the cause, because the New Hampshire secretary of state’s workplace lays out on its web site, is that every county picks a quantity out of a hat to resolve which candidate is listed first, and the remainder of the candidates comply with in alphabetical order after that.
Regardless of a number of group members explaining this to individuals within the feedback, many others rapidly jumped to the conclusion that this was some type of “corruption”—once more with none proof.
As voting continued throughout the day, members of the group posted footage and screenshots that they believed confirmed some type of dishonest within the election course of—together with one member who posted a screenshot of the Wi-Fi networks at her polling place, with out remark, to presumably counsel that the voting machines have been related to the web, a long-held conspiracy amongst election deniers.
