The midterm elections are just a few days away. Though historically the president’s party takes a beating in the House and Senate, that’s far from assured this year. Will the midterms be a rebuke or an endorsement of the Trump administration? On November 6, you will decide.

As 2016 emphatically demonstrated, elections are also a major battleground for information warfare. Coordinated misinformation campaigns focus not just on individual candidates but also the electoral system itself. And though political operatives have used misleading tactics for years, the amplification and network efforts of social media have been like gasoline to a fire. Misinformation now spreads farther, faster, and ensnares unwitting accomplices who share bad information without realizing it.

Tech companies and governments are slowly beginning to realize that the information war is on and they need to respond. But you still need to be aware, and be informed.

The Facts

The balance of the House and the Senate will be decided on Tuesday, along with 36 governorships, 30 state attorneys general, many state legislative seats, and crucial local ballot initiatives on everything from a new tax to fight homelessness in San Francisco to recreational marijuana to climate change to drug sentencing reform.

To find out accurate information about where you can vote, whether you can still register, and who and what is on the ballot in your area, you can consult your local election officials. The US Election Assistance Commission lists the phone numbers and websites for every state and US territory on its website. There are also third-party tools supported by nonpartisan organizations like Ballotopedia, Democracy Works, and Vote411.org, which allow you to input your address and receive individualized voter information for your area.

What People Are Saying

There’s a ton of misinformation out there, and it’s always evolving, but there are a few general themes that come up every election cycle.

Voter Fraud

Voter fraud is a constant boogeyman. In the months leading up to the 2016 election, for instance, President Trump warned that millions of undocumented immigrants would vote. After he won the presidency but lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, he said that voter fraud was the reason. None of this, said the state authorities whose job it is to maintain the integrity of elections in the US, was true. In fact, when all the votes had been tallied---137.7 million of them---states investigating claims of voter fraud found “next to none,” according to Tthe New York Times.

Still, months into his first term, President Trump created a commission explicitly to study voter fraud. After intense criticism from experts who called it unnecessary, as well as legal challenges, it was dissolved in January, having released no evidence to substantiate the president’s allegations that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election. That hasn’t stopped people from claiming it’s a major issue, or from imposing restrictions like voter ID.

To support claims for widespread voter fraud, many point to states and counties where there are more registered voters than eligible adults. In California, for example, the claim that 11 counties have more people registered than are eligible to vote has spread from a conservative activist group called Judicial Watch to Alex Jones to Breitbart all the way to secretary of state candidate Mark Meuser, who regularly records and tweets out videos alleging widespread registration fraud in the state. This argument is misleading, as The Sacramento Bee, the Los Angeles Times, and The San Diego Union Tribune have all reported, because they combine “inactive” and “active” voters lists. In California, inactive voters—who, for example, may have moved but not returned an address confirmation notice—are still eligible to vote, according to state law; they just need to show proof of residency when they arrive at the polls. A January report from the California secretary of state noted that only 75 percent of eligible voters in the state are registered.