Voting had only been underway in the US for a few hours and polls still hadn’t even opened in some parts of the country, but Republican strategist and pro-Trump influencer Joey Mannarino had apparently seen enough.

“MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF VOTER FRAUD BEING REPORTED ALL OVER THE COUNTRY!” Mannarino asserted on X at 9:02 am EST, offering no evidence to support his declaration. “The Democrats are stealing our country right out from under us!”

As in any other election year, as polling places opened, people began showing up to vote, and voting machines started whirring into action, some jurisdictions ran into problems.

Severe flooding along Florida’s Space Coast meant about 20 polling places had to be moved. Bad storms over the weekend likely caused brief power outages in Arizona’s Maricopa County, forcing the temporary closure of several polling places. Pennsylvania’s Luzerne County was missing a scanner box. And in Westchester County, New York, voting in the hotly contested House race between incumbent Republican representative Mike Lawler and Democrat Cait Conley hit a roadblock early on Tuesday morning when machines stopped accepting paper ballots.

Voting machine malfunctions—much like bad weather and power outages—are fairly common during elections. While typically attributable to some mundane problem like ageing components, these malfunctions are often the source of rumors or conspiracy theories.

And like other election years in recent memory, there’s a network of MAGA influencers, Republican lawmakers, pro-Trump trolls and administration officials with enormous online audiences who are waiting for anything—literally anything—that they can claim is evidence of voter fraud.

Source link