Election fake news targets electronic voting, study says
Brazilian Electronic voting machines on Wednesday (May 13) completed 30 years amid narratives of misinformation about the voting system.
A survey by Projeto Confia, an initiative of the Pact for Democracy, found that more than 45 percent of the false content about elections shared during recent election cycles targeted electronic voting machines.
Content targeting the Supreme Court and other Brazilian authorities came next, at 27.1 percent, followed by theories of fraud in vote counting, at 21.8 percent, and misinformation about election rules and logistics, at 15.4 percent.
Among the most common examples of fake news about electronic voting machines are messages claiming there was a delay in the “confirm” button or false allegations that the machine would automatically complete the numbers entered by the voter.
False explanations
According to Helena Salvador, coordinator of the Projeto Confia , misinformation content exploits the public’s limited technical knowledge of how the electronic voting system works.
“These narratives rely on false technical explanations to suggest flaws and possibilities for manipulation. Specific elements of the voting experience, such as the buttons on the voting machine and the messages displayed on the screen, are used to create a sense of unease and fuel doubt,” she said.
Salvador noted that the gap between the public’s interaction with the voting machine and its understanding of how the technology works facilitates the spread of this type of content.
“People only have access to the voting machine every two years, on Election Day. This means that if someone spreads fake news about a button or a key, many people have no way to quickly verify it,” Salvador explained.
The study’s coordinator said the goal was to understand where distrust in elections stems from and to develop strategies to combat misinformation ahead of the 2026 elections.
“We wanted to understand exactly what people stop believing when they talk about elections. The survey shows that most misinformation revolves around electronic voting machines; we want to arrive in 2026 prepared to build strong counter-narratives and respond quickly to attacks against the electoral system,” the coordinator said.
The study analyzed more than 3,000 pieces of content published during the 2022 and 2024 elections. Of these, 716 messages were selected for in-depth qualitative analysis. According to the study, 326 messages - equivalent to more than 45 percent of the total - contained attacks on electronic voting machines.
The Pact for Democracy is a coalition of more than 200 civil society organizations that works to defend the democratic rule of law, monitor threats to democracy, and combat electoral misinformation. The study analyzed misinformation messages circulated during the 2022 and 2024 election cycles.
Trust
A Quaest survey released in February of this year shows that 53 percent of Brazilians said they trust electronic voting machines. In 2022, a Datafolha survey released by the Superior Electoral Court indicated a rate of 82 percent.
Among people aged 60 or older, 53 percent stated they have confidence in the system, a figure researchers attribute to memories of the period when voting was done on paper, prior to 1996. Among young people aged 16 to 34, however, trust reaches 57 percent.
Among those aged 35 to 50, 50 percent declared they do not consider electronic voting machines reliable.
“No one criticizes the voting machines simply by saying they are bad; there are quite sophisticated explanations online attempting to convince people that the system does not work. This highlights the importance of making the voting process more understandable, from the moment the voter presses a button until the results are tallied,” Helena Salvador said.
