Donald Trump is planning a dirty trick on election night to try to overturn the election. He used it in 2020, and he’s going to do it again.
Here’s the deal. Most election nights, Republicans appear to take an early lead because small, rural precincts tend to finish counting their votes faster than big-city precincts. Then, later in the night, Democrats catch up when the returns come in from urban areas.
Election experts call it the “red mirage.” It’s nothing nefarious or surprising. It’s just that vote-counting takes longer in bigger precincts than in smaller precincts.
But in 2020, Donald Trump claimed that the “blue shift” was evidence that Democrats were stealing the election — and a lot of people believed him. It was the beginning of the Big Lie that culminated in the January 6 insurrection and his bloody attempt to overturn the election.
We’ve just launched a new video called “Beware Trump’s Election Night Trick,” and it’s already spreading like wildfire. Views on YouTube are 5 times higher than what we usually see. Nearly half a million people watched it on that platform alone in the first two days.
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It’s not hard to understand why people might be confused by Trump’s efforts to spin the election night “red mirage,” and that’s why we need to explain it now, so people know what to expect.
In Georgia, for example, there are more than 300 times more people living in heavily Democratic Fulton County than in deep-red Glascock County. If Fulton County has 300 times as many ballots to count, then obviously Glascock is going to finish counting first.
In 2020, when results came in faster from counties like Glascock, that made it look like Trump was winning in Georgia, when really he was not. Anyone who follows elections knows about the red mirage and the blue shift. The former political director of Fox News testified before Congress that it “happens every time.”
That’s why we need to act now to inoculate people against Trump’s lies so that when Trump declares victory on election night, they know he’s full of it.
Donate now to help educate the public, get our videos in front of as many people as possible, and stop Donald Trump’s Big Lie.
Reams of social-science research shows that it’s largely ineffective to try to debunk a lie after it’s entered the political bloodstream. In fact, debunking can actually backfire by repeating and reinforcing the initial falsehood.
Instead, psychologists have learned that the best way to counter disinformation is by “pre-bunking,” or debunking lies in advance. By alerting people about a lie before they hear it, we can neutralize the power of the false claim before it becomes encoded in the brain, effectively inoculating people against the virus of disinformation.
In other words, when it comes to combating disinformation, prevention is more effective than a cure.
That’s exactly what we’re doing right now, and it’s working. Our videos and posts warning people about Trump’s election night lie are spreading like wildfire.
And we’re not just preaching to the choir. We have a disproportionately large number of self-identified conservatives and independents following us on social media, and we’re able to reach huge numbers of young people through platforms like TikTok and Instagram who might otherwise be taken in by Trump’s conspiracy theories.
We need to warn as many people as possible before Tuesday about Trump’s next Big Lie, and your donations are absolutely vital to our ability to get our messages out. Will you donate to help educate the public, get our videos in front of as many people as possible, and stop Donald Trump’s election night dirty trick?
Robert Reich
Inequality Media Civic Action
