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With just three weeks until the U.S. midterm elections, familiar conspiracy theories about election fraud are resurfacing on social media. From Arizona to Michigan, allegations of stolen elections are being revived and repackaged with new controversies, lawsuits and administrative disputes. The underlying message remains the same: Americans cannot trust their electoral system. But they can.
Before examining how these narratives are spreading, it is worth establishing a few facts.
Voter fraud in the United States is extremely rare. Of the more than 25 million votes cast across six battleground states in the 2020 presidential election, an Associated Press investigation identified fewer than 475 potential cases of voter fraud. Even those were not all confirmed.
That is not a coincidence. U.S. elections operate under multiple layers of security designed to prevent fraud and detect errors. Voting equipment undergoes pre-election testing to verify that ballots are recorded and counted accurately. After Election Day, canvassing procedures, reconciliation checks, and post-election audits provide additional safeguards against mistakes and irregularities.
Widespread election fraud misinformation keeps coming back because isolated incidents on voting day, routine administrative errors, and legitimate legal disputes can easily be cherry-picked, stripped of context, and presented as false evidence (unrealistically) of a coordinated effort to manipulate election results.
The good news is that the strategy is not new and we can inoculate people against it. Similar narratives circulated during the 2020 and 2022 U.S. elections and have appeared in countries across Latin America with completely different infrastructures and rules, indicating that allegations of electoral manipulation can be framed to undermine elections whenever convenient for bad actors.
What is changing ahead of the 2026 midterms is the material being used to sustain these allegations. So let's dive into five key states monitored by DDIA researchers to see what is being said and what the evidence actually shows.
Arizona: Maricopa County Remains at the Center of Election Fraud Disinformation
In Arizona, the 2020 presidential election is still being contested. Last week, DDIA identified 540 posts (mostly in English) promoting allegations that elections in the state, particularly in Maricopa County, were stolen or manipulated. Many recycled accusations from the 2020 presidential race and the 2022 midterms, despite the absence of evidence supporting claims of widespread fraud. But other publications used new elements in the attempt to recreate fear.
Early ballots mistakenly mailed in Maricopa County: Hundreds of social media posts, mostly on X, claimed that Maricopa County has mistakenly mailed thousands of early ballots, suggesting something suspicious was happening. But the claims were misleading. The approximately 3,000 ballots, out of a county with 2.5 million registered voters, were sent to the correct recipients and remain valid. Voters can complete and return them as usual. The only difference from previous years is that the ballots arrived slightly earlier than scheduled. There is no evidence of fraud.
Election workers accused of using unauthorized flash drives during the night: Other posts on X amplified a video allegedly showing Maricopa County election workers inserting unauthorized flash drives into voting machines late at night. The footage prompted accusations of misconduct and calls for criminal investigations. But election officials rejected the allegations, explaining that the recording showed routine election operations conducted during regular working hours. The video provided no evidence of unauthorized activity or electoral manipulation.
Officials allegedly apologized to Trump. A smaller group of posts claimed that Maricopa County election officials had apologized to President Donald Trump for counting tens of thousands of ballots supposedly cast by noncitizens for Joe Biden in the 2020 election. These publications also alleged that Katie Hobbs, then Arizona’s secretary of state and now governor, and Rusty Bowers, then speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, had personally ordered the destruction of tens of thousands of mail-in ballots cast for Trump. No credible evidence was presented to support either accusation. Here is PolitiFacts’ work on Arizona's 2020 results.
Why does this matter? When fresh accusations are added to recycled conspiracy theories from the 2020 and 2022 elections, disinformers reinforce the misleading narrative that Arizona's electoral system has been compromised for years.
California: When Counting Votes Slowly Becomes Evidence of Fraud
In California, the time it takes to count votes has become a political controversy. After President Donald Trump praised Brazil this week for delivering election results within hours, DDIA identified at least 557 social media posts questioning the integrity of California’s slower vote-counting process. Many portrayed the delay as evidence of potential fraud, despite the state’s established procedures for verifying and counting ballots.
Interestingly, the comparison exposes a striking contradiction in election fraud narratives. In California, critics suggest that taking several days to count ballots creates opportunities for manipulation. In Brazil, however, conspiracy theorists have repeatedly argued the exact opposite,that results produced within hours by electronic voting machines are suspiciously fast.
What really matters is: There is a straightforward explanation for California’s slower process, and it is worth sharing with friends and family. Mail-in ballots must be received, verified and processed (Brazil does not have mail-in voting). Election officials check signatures and give eligible voters opportunities to correct certain ballot problems. These safeguards take time, as the California Secretary of State explains.
Ultimately, the speed of vote counting is not a measure of election integrity. What matters is whether ballots are properly verified, accurately counted and subject to meaningful audits. A fast count is not inherently suspicious, just as a slow count is not evidence of fraud.
Michigan: When a Dispute Over Poll Workers Fuels Fraud Allegations
Election fraud allegations have circulated in Michigan for years, particularly since the 2020 presidential election. You might remember the “Stop the Count” scene in Detroit and how poll workers were pressured. A new controversy is now popping up in the same direction. A few days ago, the Republican National Committee (RNC) challenged the partisan composition of election workers in Lansing, arguing that Democrats outnumber Republicans in violation of election rules. The dispute has prompted a lawsuit and renewed debate over election integrity.
But there is an important distinction between challenging how election workers are appointed and proving that an election is (or will be) rigged. Even if concerns about partisan representation are legally justified, they do not establish that votes have been manipulated or that the November 3 election will be unfair.
Remember: This case illustrates how legitimate disputes over election administration can be folded into broader, unsubstantiated narratives of systemic fraud. By connecting a current legal controversy to allegations that have circulated since 2020, social media users can portray an administrative dispute as further evidence of an electoral system supposedly designed to favor one party,when it is not.
Florida: When Individual Criminal Cases Become Evidence of Widespread Fraud
In Florida, allegations of election fraud gained momentum this week after the Justice Department announced criminal charges against 16 noncitizens accused of election-related offenses. Some social media users quickly seized on the announcement as evidence that noncitizen voting is a widespread problem threatening American elections. But besides the fact that individual criminal cases are not evidence of systemic election fraud, the defendants (who have not even been convicted yet) were located in multiple states, not only in Florida, bringing down the conspiracy theory of a coordinated action to change the results in the state.
Attention here: What makes this narrative particularly misleading is that it builds on real events to support conclusions that go far beyond the available evidence. Criminal investigations are legitimate. Illegal voting can occur. But isolated cases do not establish the existence of a coordinated, nationwide effort to manipulate elections.
Beyond that, for Latino audiences, the distinction is particularly important. Allegations of noncitizen voting frequently overlap with political debates about immigration, and presenting individual criminal cases as evidence of widespread fraud can reinforce misleading assumptions about immigrants' participation in U.S. elections.
Texas: When Fraud Allegations Become Calls for Intervention
In Texas, election fraud narratives are moving beyond accusations of voter fraud to demands for federal intervention in how elections are administered. DDIA's monitoring identified discussions on social media about efforts by conservative activists Cleta Mitchell and Tina Peters to persuade Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to expand federal control over voting machines. Their proposal draws on a familiar conspiracy theory,that voting machines are compromised because they contain foreign-made components, supposedly posing a national security threat. Not true.
This strategy (once again) is hardly new. Our research team has documented similar attempts to undermine confidence in voting technology across the Americas. In the United States, the 2020 "Sharpiegate" conspiracy falsely suggested that ballots marked with Sharpie pens would be invalidated or manipulated. Latin American countries have seen variations of the same tactic, but perhaps the closest parallel comes, once again, from Brazil.
After the 2022 presidential election, supporters of defeated President Jair Bolsonaro repeatedly questioned the reliability of electronic voting machines and called for military intervention. Among the falsehoods they circulated was the claim that Brazil's voting machines had been manufactured in Venezuela, suggesting foreign interference in the country's electoral system. Not true either.
Spread the word: While the situations in Texas and Brazil are not identical, the underlying strategy of portraying voting technology as compromised is similar and aims to fuel public distrust. This can potentially generate doubt and real life violent acts, as was the case with the January 6, 2021 and January 8, 2023 U.S. and Brazil insurrections.