Updated October 31, 2024 at 16:51 PM ET
A network of accounts on the social media site X is claiming to be foreign nationals who have illegally voted in the U.S. presidential election, according to new research from the nonprofit Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
The accounts have multiple signatures that suggest they are coordinated, drawing the attention of researchers in the final stretch of election.
Some of the accounts have shared images of ballots alongside passports, including from countries that no longer exist, including the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and Prussia, the disinformation and extremism research organization reported. The accounts are reinforcing baseless narratives about voter fraud promoted by former President Donald Trump and his allies. The most popular post, sporting an image of a French passport, has racked up more than 12 million views on X, formerly Twitter.
ISD said that the first post from the network was published on Oct. 22, not long after Republicans filed lawsuits challenging overseas voters’ ballots in a few swing states. Those lawsuits cast doubt on the eligibility of some overseas voters. Trump falsely claimed in a social media post in September that Democrats intended to use overseas ballots to “CHEAT” and manipulate the election results. The lawsuits have not found success in the courts.
The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, or UOCAVA, lets states set up systems to allow military members and American citizens living overseas to vote. The allegations surrounding the law are part of a larger narrative that the election will be stolen from Trump through a combination of lax voting laws and the possibility that noncitizens will illegally vote in large numbers and swing the very tight presidential race.
Multiple studies have found that noncitizen voting is extremely rare. Still, Trump-supporting Republicans have latched onto the idea and may use claims that noncitizens voted to challenge the election results.
While the baseless claims about overseas voting frame Trump as the victim of illegal votes cast for Vice President Kamala Harris, many of the accounts that ISD identified boast that they actually voted for Trump in swing states.
“I’m going to illegally vote for Donald Trump as a European national,” said one post.
One sign that accounts may be coordinated is that many of the posts shared identical language and images. Some repeat the phrase “Democrats had it coming for not enforcing voter ID laws.” Republicans in many states have long pushed for stricter voter ID laws.
The accounts may have received algorithmic amplification from X. An ISD researcher received a push notification from X about one of the posts, even though the researcher did not follow the account. The posts have also circulated on the Telegram messaging app, where they have been promoted by accounts that share Russian propaganda, and the message board 4chan, ISD said.
In response to ISD's findings, an X spokesperson said in a statement "this is not a network or coordinated, these are users trying to create confusion or troll and have very, very small visibility, about 120 views each." The platform has yet to explain how the it defines coordination or how it calculated the average of 120 views, considering that one post received more than 10 million views.
ISD was unable to say who is behind the apparently coordinated network of accounts. Influence operations run by foreign governments are known to amplify domestic tensions to drive up tension and chaos in the U.S.
Copyright 2024 NPR