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These Two Rumors Are Going Viral Before California’s Recall Elections


Aspect California’s September 14 election whether it is on Recall Governor Gavin Newsom The closer we get, the more unfounded rumors about the event increase.

Two widely circulated on the internet, how and why they spread, said they were wrong, state and local officials said.

On August 19, a woman posted a video on Instagram of her putting the California special election ballot in an envelope.

“You have to watch out for these two holes on the front of the envelope,” he said, and moved the holes closer to the camera so the audience could see it. “You can see if someone voted ‘yes’ to remember Newsom. I think that’s very sketchy and irresponsible, but that’s asking for fraud.”

According to a review by The New York Times, the idea that the holes in the ballot were used to weed out votes from those calling for the recall of Democratic Chairman of the Government Newsom spread rapidly on the Internet.

The Instagram video garnered nearly half a million views. Posts on messaging app Telegram saying California rigged the election garnered nearly 200,000 views. An article about ballots on the far-right site The Gateway Pundit reached 626,000 people on Facebook, according to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned social media analytics tool.

State and local officials said the ballot boxes were not new and had not been treacherously used. Holes at both ends of the signature line are inserted into the envelope to help low-sighted voters know where to sign the envelope, said Jenna Dresner, spokesperson for the California Secretary of State’s Office of Election Cybersecurity.

The design of the voting envelope has been used for several election cycles and civil design consultants Mike Sanchez, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County registrar, suggested the holes for accessibility, he added. He said voters could choose to put the ballot in the envelope in a way that would not reveal any ballot markings through a hole.

Instagram has since added a confirmation tag to the original video to indicate that it can mislead people. According to CrowdTangle data, the fact-check reached 20,700 people.

On August 17, police in Torrance, California, Published a post on Facebook He said cops were responding to a call about a man who passed out in his car in the 7-Eleven parking lot. Police said the man had items such as a loaded firearm, drugs and thousands of pieces of mail, including more than 300 unopened mailed ballots for special elections.

Far-right sites such as Red Voice Media and Conservative Firing Line claimed the incident was an example of Democrats trying to steal an election through mail-in voting. His articles were later shared on Facebook and collectively reached 1.57 million people, according to CrowdTangle data.

Mark Ponegalek, a public information officer with the Torrance Police Department, said the investigation into the incident is ongoing. He said that the US postal inspector was also involved and no conclusion was reached.

As a result, the online articles and posts concluding that the man had attempted voter fraud were “baseless”, he said.

“I have no indication at this time that I can tell you one way or another,” Ponegalek said, of whether the man wanted to cheat in the election with the ballots he collected. He added that the man may have intended to commit identity fraud.



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