With Election Day 2024 only a day away, election workers across the United States are taking unprecedented security measures in anticipation of possible violence against them.
Law enforcement officials, according to The Guardian, “are concerned about the rise of the right-wing election denial movement.”
In an article published on November 4, New York Times journalists Paul Mozur, Adam Satariano, Aaron Krolik and Steven Lee Myers report that communications among far-right groups on Telegram are raising concerns about the possibility of violence on Election Day.
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“A New York Times analysis of more than one million messages across nearly 50 Telegram channels with over 500,000 members found a sprawling and interconnected movement intended to question the credibility of the presidential election, interfere with the voting process and potentially dispute the outcome,” the journalists explain. “Nearly every channel reviewed by The Times was created after the 2020 election, highlighting the growth and increased sophistication of the election denialism movement.”
Posts from some of these MAGA “election denialism” groups, according to the Times’ analysis, “urged followers to be prepared for violence.”
“These calls to action extended the right-wing language typically found on other major social media sites into the physical world,” Mozur, Satariano, Krolik and Myers report. ” In New Hampshire, one Telegram channel instructed people to question local officials in person about absentee ballot tallies. In Georgia, followers of a local Telegram channel were urged to attend election board meetings to argue for limits to absentee voting.”
The Times reporters add, “In New Mexico, people were told to monitor voting stations with cameras, file police reports if necessary and be ready to ‘fight like hell.'”
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Read the New York Times’ full report at this link (subscription required).
