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 had been satisfied of election fraud inside minutes of the polls opening on Tuesday morning.
“Corruption already beginning,” one member wrote below a submit 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 bunch of feedback, the group’s members posted messages of help 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 had been all inspired by the group’s founder to finish seven duties all through the day to make sure election safety, together with demanding data from ballot employees, logging any discrepancies they arrive throughout, and monitoring whether or not everybody was being requested to offer 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 shortly gained traction as Trump and lots of throughout the Republican occasion had 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 in the course of 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 in the course of the major had been celebrating Trump’s victory over former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, and had, within the hours earlier than the outcomes had 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 had been the identical and that Trump’s identify was not listed in the identical place on each one.
There was loads 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 observe in alphabetical order after that.
Regardless of a number of group members explaining this to individuals within the feedback, many others shortly jumped to the conclusion that this was some type of “corruption”—once more with none proof.
As voting continued in the course of the day, members of the group posted photos 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 recommend that the voting machines had been linked to the web, a long-held conspiracy amongst election deniers.
