Who needs Russia? Loudest attacks on US vote are from Trump
Associated PressWASHINGTON — Russia didn’t have to lift a finger. U.S. officials had been on high alert for foreign interference heading into Nov. 3, especially after a presidential election four years earlier in which Russian intelligence officers hacked Democratic emails and Russian troll farms used social media to sway public opinion. Public service announcements from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity arm warned of the ways Russia or other countries could interfere again, including by creating or altering websites after the election to spread false information about the results “in an attempt to discredit the electoral process and undermine confidence in U.S. democratic institutions.” Yet many of the false claims about voting, elections and the candidates in the months and weeks ahead of the election — and in the days since — originated not from foreign actors eager to destabilize the U.S. but from domestic groups and Trump himself. One example: On July 30, Trump tweeted misinformation about mail ballots three separate times, including stating without evidence that mail ballots would be an “easy way” for foreign adversaries to interfere, calling the process inaccurate and fraudulent and repeating a false distinction that absentee ballots are somehow more secure than mail ballots when both are treated the same. “You’re talking about top-down activity that is facilitated by the ability of these folks to create these audiences.” Researchers at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society analyzed social media posts and news stories about voter fraud and determined that “Fox News and Donald Trump’s own campaign were far more influential in spreading false beliefs than Russian trolls or Facebook clickbait artists.” One of the researchers, Harvard Law School professor Yochai Benkler, said that when his team looked at sudden increases in online chatter about voter fraud, they almost always followed a comment from Trump or top allies.
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