Electoral fraud accusations grow before the elections in Spain

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Days before Spain held a crucial election, misleading claims about voting by mail and voter fraud were spreading on social media, casting doubt on the results before the votes were even counted.

The accusations, amplified by supporters of the center-right Popular Party and far-right Vox party, were very similar to the baseless claims released by then-President Donald Trump before his 2020 election defeat, and They recalled that the mistrust of elections that has clouded American politics has also taken root in Europe.

Sunday’s general election could tip Spain to the populist right if the PP wrests power from the Socialist Party and its far-left partner, Unidas Podemos.

The president of the government, Pedro Sánchez, called early elections after the great defeat of his left-wing coalition in regional and local elections, which were also marked by misinformation about the elections and a rise in hate messages against Muslims and immigrants.

Most polls favor the Popular Party, although it will likely need Vox’s support to form a government majority.

Debunked videos have circulated on Facebook and Twitter in recent weeks claiming to show poll workers tampering with ballot boxes. Facebook identified the videos as fake, while Twitter has taken no action. Other videos posted on Facebook and TikTok allege that Sánchez’s party will try to steal the election to avoid defeat. Many carry the hashtag #pucherazo.

As in the United States, conspiracy theories center on voting by mail, with some far-right voters suggesting that the Postal Service could be used to rig a victory for Sánchez. It is a message that Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of the Popular Party, has helped to amplify. At a rally last week he urged Post Office workers to maintain their independence.

“I ask the postmen in Spain (…) to work to the maximum, morning, afternoon and night,” Feijóo said during a rally in Murcia. “I ask those postmen, regardless of their bosses, to distribute all the votes before the end of the term.”

The Conservative leader later said he did not mean to imply that the postal service was going to try to steal the election, but was simply referring to the challenges of handling so many ballots.

“Nobody talks about punching,” said Feijóo.

Social media researchers at the nonprofit organization Reset identified several examples of election-related misinformation spread on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok. Although the specific content varies by platform — anti-Muslim hate, for example, is especially prevalent on Twitter — the experts found voter denialism everywhere they looked.

Some of the accounts that spread misinformation about the Spanish elections have a huge and growing reach. Reset analysts identified 88 social media accounts that have repeatedly disseminated extremist content in Spain with more than 14 million followers, including around one million recent followers. Posts identified by Reset as hateful with election conspiracy theories had been viewed more than 100 million times since January.

“Vector fraud messages that undermine trust in democratic processes, and which also dominated regional elections in Spain, spread across different platforms,” Reset researchers concluded, sharing their findings with The Associated Press. Reset is based in London and studies how social media affects democracies across the globe.

Spain’s controversial elections come amid an uptick in hate speech directed against Muslim immigrants and residents in the country. Some election ads published by the far-right Vox party take a similar anti-immigration line and pick up on a conspiracy theory known as the Great Replacement that suggests that democratic leaders in countries like Spain and the United States are trying to replace white residents with non-white immigrants.

“In 2070 there will no longer be Spanish families,” says an online ad from Vox.

Like the United States, Spain has independent laws, audits, and controls designed to combat voter fraud. And as in the United States, the actual cases of fraud that are identified and disclosed are often exaggerated or taken out of context to suggest far greater crimes.

Police detained 10 people in the city of Melilla, a small Spanish enclave on the African coast, in May after investigators uncovered alleged voter fraud. Although the alleged attempt was exposed and thwarted, it is being used on social media as an indication of more widespread fraud.

When it came to identifying and removing false claims, the Reset report accused tech platforms of inconsistency, noting that conspiracy theories or misleading claims about elections can be identified or removed from one platform and left to run wild on another. .

Marc Esteve Del Valle, a professor at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, said the amount of false and misleading information about the Spanish elections and the many platforms on which it is spread make it difficult for people to know what to believe. Esteve del Valle is Spanish and has investigated the use of anti-immigrant rhetoric by the extreme right.

“It’s becoming more and more difficult to differentiate between reliable information and disinformation,” he said.