True the Vote Allows Election Misinformation on VoteAlert
True the Vote Allows Election Misinformation on VoteAlert
True the Vote's website VoteAlert allows crowd-sourced, AI-generated misinformation in its widely-shared election reports.
TLDR
True the Vote (TTV) set up a site called VoteAlert. Election conspiracy theorists frequently share reports of “election inconsistencies” on the site in a semi-public feed.
The reports made on the site are viewable without authentication via its “share” link, allowing others to easily post and share election disinformation on other social media platforms (bypassing election content policies, in some cases).
TTV staff allegedly review VoteAlert's reports. However, Open Measures received information that false reports generated by large language models (LLMs) were easy to post on the site without evidence to back them. Further, a majority of the site's reports come from swing states.
TTV has previously been sued for its history of false election claims. They have also been recommended for FBI and IRS investigations. It is unsurprising that they are now turning to crowd-sourced disinformation ahead of the 2024 US presidential election.
Background
True the Vote (TTV) was founded in 2009 by Catherine Engelbrecht. The organization emerged as an offshoot of a Tea Party-affiliated non-profit organization which Engelbrecht also founded.1 In 2013, Mother Jones reported that Engelbrecht was part of the conservative Groundswell Group, which had been meeting secretly to fight "progressivism in the United States” and the “GOP establishment”.2
Groundswell Group has previously included prominent conservatives, like Virginia Thomas and John Bolton, among its members.3 Open Measures researchers previously reported on TTV’s presence on Truth Social, a Trump Media-owned social media platform.
Legal Challenges
TTV has long been focused on its stated objective of “stopping voter fraud”. However, their legal efforts to support that goal have largely been unsuccessful. In 2021, TTV challenged thousands of voter registrations in Georgia and was sued by Fair Fight, a Georgia organization claiming voter suppression.4 Though the case was resolved in TTV's favor in 2024, Judge Steve C. Jones wrote that many of TTV's challenges were "seemingly frivolous."5
In 2022, the Republican Arizona Attorney General referred TTV to the FBI and IRS for its potentially false claims.6 TTV has also been criticized for allegedly using its tax-exempt, non-profit status to benefit Engelbrecht and others through self-dealing.7
VoteAlert Content Policies
TTV recently launched VoteAlert, a new website which conspiracy theorists are currently using to share reports of alleged voter fraud. Given TTV’s reputation, potential criminal offenses, and documented history of false voter fraud claims, VoteAlert was likely set up to share and archive election-related disinformation.
Open Measures researchers found that VoteAlert's primarily text-based data provides minimal evidence to support its claims of alleged election inconsistencies. Additionally, they found that the site's major reports concern swing states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Lastly, Open Measures researchers received examples of user-submitted reports generated by large language models (LLMs), further evidence of the site's lack of credibility.
Overview
VoteAlert is accessible to anyone with a web browser. To sign up, users simply need to provide an email. The site’s About page states its purpose as “[documentation of] election irregularities".
At the time of writing, Open Measures has manually recorded nearly 285 posts and comments from the site (214 comments and 71 “reports”). The majority (48) of these “reports” only contain text, while the remainder also include image and video attachments.
VoteAlert staff reply to the vast majority of reports made on their platform. Typically, these replies are innocuous, encouraging users to seek state resources for their concerns. However, the staff nearly always links users to their state's home page on TTV as well, signing each reply with “God Bless”.
Typically, the conspiracy theory content on VoteAlert comes from comments left by non-TTV staff. These posts discuss stolen elections, fraudulent voting machines, poll workers allegedly providing voters Sharpies to disqualify their votes, and other controversies about paper ballots. Some comments even encourage illegal activities, such as ballot destruction. TTV appears to be doing minimal moderation on VoteAlert, as the site’s comment sections are full of fraud attempts and scams.
Report Authenticity
During its investigation, Open Measures received third-party information indicating that users on VoteAlert could successfully publish false reports written with LLMs that bypassed site moderation.
User: ConcernedVoter2024
Location: OhioSubmission:
"I voted early, but when I checked my voter registration status online a week later, it said I hadn't voted at all. I called the county office, and they told me it must have been a 'system error' that would be corrected, but it still hasn't updated. How many other votes like mine are missing?"
Because VoteAlert accepts reports supported solely by text-based evidence, it is unsurprising that the platform is host to AI-generated election disinformation (which then spreads easily when cross-posted on other platforms).
Currently, the site has no functionality to tell users whether a report is real, fake, or AI-generated—this is true for logged-in VoteAlert users, TTV admin, and users on other social media platforms where these reports are cross-posted. That VoteAlert has no viewable policies against posting fake reports in their terms of service only compounds this threat.
Conclusion
VoteAlert allows users to submit unsubstantiated claims of fraud related to the 2024 US presidential election to its site. One of its recurring themes is that users can easily submit inaccurate claims and disinformation, which can be easily linked and shared elsewhere.
VoteAlert/TTV staff have no way of validating their report claims prior to posting them publicly on their feed. Further, Open Measures researchers learned from a third-party that users were able to submit false, AI-generated claims. VoteAlert has no publicly viewable site policy against submitting these claims. Similarly, VoteAlert's comment sections are filled with conspiracy theories that appear to be unmoderated.
Since our previous report on TTV, Open Measures has observed a considerable increase in TTV activity. We will continue to monitor the activity of any possible online influence operations ahead of the election.
Identify disinformation and extremism with the Open Measures platform.
Organizations use Open Measures’ tooling every day to track trends related to networks of influence, coordinated harassment campaigns, and state-backed info ops.
Kang, C. (2022, September 14). How a spreader of voter fraud conspiracy theories became a Star. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/technology/catherine-engelbrecht-voter-fraud-conspiracy-theories.html.
Corn, D. (2013, July 25). Inside the new strategy group where right-wing activists and journalists coordinate messaging. Mother Jones. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/07/groundswell-rightwing-group-ginni-thomas/.
Ibid.
Corasaniti, N. (2024, January 2). Conservative group wins legal victory over 2020 voting challenges in Georgia. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/02/us/politics/true-the-vote-fair-fight-georgia.html.
Nolan, J. (2024, January 2). Judge rules true the vote’s 2020 mass voter challenges don’t amount to illegal intimidation • georgia recorder. Georgia Recorder. https://georgiarecorder.com/briefs/judge-rules-true-the-votes-2020-mass-voter-challenges-dont-amount-to-illegal-intimidation/.
Cheney, K., & Wu, N. (2022, October 14). Arizona AG’s Office asks Feds to investigate conservative nonprofit true the vote - politico. Politico. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/14/arizona-ag-true-the-vote-00061973.
Jaramillo, C. (2023, June 5). Complaint: True the vote leaders used donations for personal gain. ProPublica. https://www.propublica.org/article/true-the-vote-donations-irs-engelbrecht-phillips.