Who Are They?

The 200 accounts shown above are a sample of a network on Twitter talking about Voter Fraud and amplifying false and/or misleading narratives about election integrity and the democratic process. We discovered that this group of 200 accounts either generated or were mentioned in over 140 million tweets over the last year. As you will see below, this network is not only growing at an accelerating rate but also coordinating with effective tactics that appear to bypass many of the detection methods of existing disinformation research.

As you read through the rest of this story and the subsequent report, you'll probably be left with more questions than answers. We certainly are. You might even be in awe of these networks. We can relate to that too. Some days the size, scale, and effectiveness of these modern tactics to influence conversation have fueled our curiosity. On other days, however, we're left angry, sad, and frustrated at the content these accounts push, and how we’ve all helped create an environment that allows people to weaponize participation and wield influence over civic dialogue so effectively.

We are a volunteer team of researchers, technologists, and artists that started this project to explore the conversation about Voter Fraud in US politics on Twitter. We became interested in this topic because it sits at the intersection of the VoterID and Voter Suppression conversation, and while instances of Voter Fraud are statistically infrequent it is the subject of considerable debate online. We wanted to know if there was a consistent conversation happening, was it happening on Twitter, and was there something behind the charged nature of the dialogue that we should be concerned about. Here is what we're not gonna say:

We’re not concluding that all these accounts are bots

We're not concluding that these accounts are Russian or originating from one source

We’re not concluding that all of these accounts are intentionally involved in an influence operation

We are also not claiming that there have been no documented cases of Voter Fraud. We are wondering if the reality warrants the intensity and urgency of stories that we see, or if the narratives about Voter Fraud are in fact undermining the Democratic ideals they claim to be protecting. In a brief titled Debunking the Voter Fraud Myth the Brennan center used phrases like "vanishingly rare" and "nearly non-existent" to describe the results of research looking at documented cases of Voter Fraud on US elections. If that research is thorough and accurate, then along with other research we've seen on this issue it was clear that many of the narratives related to Voter Fraud seem to at the very least be overreactions, and at worst some kind of propaganda, demagogic messaging, and/or a strategy to distract people from real issues related to election integrity.

Our hope is that by presenting our work in this format, we can discuss what influence looks like, and investigate the roles we all play and the way coordination is being used against all of us online, right now. While we don't know who these people are or why they're doing this, we do know that they're effective, influential, and coordinated in some way.

We want to know more.

Ok, What Happened?

1. Tracking #VoterFraud This investigation began when we found something strange. When we looked for use of the hashtag #VoterFraud on Twitter over the last twelve months, we saw this: Usage of #VoterFraud hashtag in 2018 2018-01 2018-02 2018-03 2018-04 2018-05 2018-06 2018-07 2018-08 2018-09 2018-10 2018-11 0,00 0 0, 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 3,500 4,000 4,500 5,000 5,500 6,000 6,500 7,000 7,500 Posts containing #VoterFraud hashtag This didn’t seem normal. In our experience, spikes in conversation around a topic sometimes have a fairly consistent pattern, but rarely at a frequency this consistent. As we went further back in time in the data, the pattern of spiking just kept going, almost like a heartbeat in an EKG machine. Then we looked at the last three years: Usage of #VoterFraud hashtag since 2016 2016-01 2016-04 2016-07 2016-10 2017-01 2017-04 2017-07 2017-10 2018-01 2018-04 2018-07 2018-10 00,00 0 10,000 20,000 30,000 40,000 50,000 60,000 70,000 80,000 90,000 Posts containing #VoterFraud hashtag Total mentions of #VoterFraud: 1429718 This heartbeat had been going for a while. We asked ourselves, who’s involved in these spikes? Could these spikes just happen around real news items related to Voter Fraud or is something else going on? From here we expanded our investigation beyond the ‘What’ to the ‘Who.’

2. Who Are They? We dug into activity around the days where consistent spikes of #VoterFraud were happening. We hoped that looking into the spikes would give us insight into who was behind these mentions and why they were happening. So, we made a list of users that mentioned #VoterFraud on the same day when there was a spike of 5,000-7,500k mentions. The first thing we noticed when comparing the spikes is that a lot of the same faces kept appearing over and over again, talking about or retweeting Voter Fraud stories on the same day, often in a similar way. Usage of #VoterFraud hashtag around 2018-08-10 07-27 08-03 08-10 08-17 08-24 0,00 0 0, 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 3,500 4,000 4,500 5,000 5,500 6,000 Posts containing #VoterFraud hashtag Accounts from the sample 200 participating in the 2018-08-10 spike @2018magamidtrmt @americanpaul202 @americanvoterus @amerikangirlbot @amvn90210 @anitalou_ @annaapp91838450 @anthemrespect @baggabrigade @battleofever @bbusa617 @bestforjuicing @busylizzie48 @choosetobfree @chrismo37540912 @debalwaystrump @donnawr8 @entheosshines @eyegloarts @fransism1g @friendlyjmc @girl4_trump @immoralreport @ish10040 @jali_cat @jameswa55188246 @jamierodr10 @javashots @jeffbailey69 @jewelsjones1 @jodaka97 @jonmichaelolse1 @jskielb3 @judy_shwabe @leahr77 @lmchristi1 @lynn_weiser @matthewcogdeill @mermaid7474 @minmtwit @mn_2a_patriot @mredtrain @mykotaus @naniof_two @newportlost @ouchinagirl @pa2ny2015 @phil200269 @pink_lady56 @proudamerpatr @pwrfulwomantoo @rb4444 @rhondahurley2 @robin_ked @sbelle1950 @seaschells @steph93065 @su68399458 @sunnyherring1 @superyayadize @tellthem2016 @toby_dorena @tomadams9999 @trumpwillwinnn @winegirl73 @zeusfanhouse In this field of research, when a group of accounts tweet similar messages at the same time, on multiple occasions, it's called co-spiking. Co-spiking can happen organically when groups of people share interests and sources that they follow. Many of these accounts were connected to each in a number of ways, like: following each other

mention/retweeting each other often

profile bios with similar aesthetic patterns (many of the same emojis and hashtags)

talking about a lot of the same things at the same time besides #VoterFraud (Qanon conspiracies, immigration and deportation, and ‘false flag operations’) There was something uncanny about these accounts. Were they all bots? We kept digging for answers. We clicked on all of the accounts, went to personal or business sites that they linked to in their Twitter bios, did reverse image searches on profile pictures, looked at linked Instagram accounts, anything we could find. We were able to verify that some accounts might, in fact, be human. But that didn't really explain what was going on here. Were they next generation bot accounts cleverly disguised? Maybe the ‘bot or not’ question didn't even matter? We started to feel like confusion and distraction were the point. So, instead of trying to figure out who they were, we tried analyzing their activity from another angle.

3. Seeing The Surge Pattern Beyond Voter Fraud, we wanted to understand the full history of these accounts, when did they sign up? How often do they tweet? How often do they get mentioned? What other things do they talk about? Something stood out when we combined the data for "Tweets from" these accounts and @mentions (other accounts mentioning or replying to the sample of 200) over a three-year timeframe. Posts by and mentions of @girl4_trump 2016-07 2016-10 2017-01 2017-04 2017-07 2017-10 2018-01 2018-04 2018-07 2018-10 00,00 0 0 1,000 0 2,000 0 3,000 0 4,000 0 5,000 0 6,000 0 7,000 0 8,000 0 9,000 10,000 11,000 12,000 13,000 Posts by @girl4_trump Mentions of @girl4_trump Accounts from the sample 200 mentioning @girl4_trump @rb4444 @scottrickhoff @tomadams9999 We call this the surge pattern, and we saw it over and over again among the 200 sample accounts tweeting about Voter Fraud. What’s happening here? The gray line is tweets from @girl4_trump and the black line is other accounts mentioning or replying to @girl4_trump. The account @girl4_trump tweeted consistently over the last two years and received very few mentions until January 2018. Between January and April 2018 @girl4_trump went from being mentioned around 60 times a day to being mentioned over 8000 times a day. 8000 mentions a day is something you might expect if a famous or semi-famous person just recently joined Twitter, or a regular person gets caught up in a major news story, but that wasn’t the case here. Here are more examples from the sample list of 200 accounts. Posts by and mentions of @battleofever 2017-10 2017-12 2018-02 2018-04 2018-06 2018-08 2018-10 0,00 0 0, 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 3,500 4,000 4,500 5,000 5,500 6,000 6,500 7,000 Posts by @battleofever Mentions of @battleofever Accounts from the sample 200 mentioning @battleofever @2018magamidtrmt @annaapp91838450 @anonymouse4537 @battleofever @fransism1g @girl4_trump @jamierodr10 @patriotpennsy @superyayadize Posts by and mentions of @bbusa617 2016-10 2017-01 2017-04 2017-07 2017-10 2018-01 2018-04 2018-07 2018-10 00,00 0 0 2,000 0 4,000 0 6,000 0 8,000 10,000 12,000 14,000 16,000 18,000 20,000 22,000 24,000 26,000 Posts by @bbusa617 Mentions of @bbusa617 Accounts from the sample 200 mentioning @bbusa617 @babysgramma @bbusa617 @friendlyjmc @geowashaxe @gregboll @immoralreport @jamierodr10 @joannecolombo @mermaid7474 @minmtwit @naniof_two @patriot_girl_tx @pinkk9lover @rb4444 @richgas8 @thebeasmith @thedrmouse @tomadams9999 @trumpwillwinnn Not all of these accounts surge at the same time, but most had a sudden, and dramatic surge from little to no activity to getting thousands or tens of thousands of mentions in a day. Some of them had a surge moment 6 months ago, many others began surging 15 days ago. The surge was especially troublesome to us for a couple of reasons. It represented a dramatic increase in conversations around toxic and divisive narratives, and it’s also much, much more difficult to detect. Most researchers in this space look for botnets and coordination by looking at follower and following relationships or accounts retweeting each other. Mentions and replies are harder to detect and analyze, they're also more effective at hiding coordination and getting people to engage. Were others seeing this evolution in tactics?

4. Replicating the Surge & Growing the Network We wanted to know how these accounts were coming onto Twitter and gaining mentions at such a high velocity — what was leading accounts to gain influence, so quickly? So we took a sample set of accounts from a group of suspicious Voter Fraud accounts and started looking at their activity day-by-day, starting at day one. What we began to notice is a pattern for how the influence machine might be working, and how coordination could be happening. Here's the consistent network pattern we saw: User signs up for an account.

User starts replying to multiple accounts—some known verified Twitter users and many other accounts that are also on our list of actors, or that fit a similar profile.

The replies tend to contain: text, memes, hashtags, and @mentions of other accounts, building on common themes.

At some point the pattern shifts from being all replies to original tweets. Those original tweets contain the same types of content as their replies do.

It appears that this pattern cycles and repeats when the next batch of new accounts come online. The next batch starts replying to the existing, newly influential accounts, and carry on with the same sequence of events for gaining influence. Posts by and mentions of @bbusa617 and @pinkk9lover 2015-10 2016-01 2016-04 2016-07 2016-10 2017-01 2017-04 2017-07 2017-10 2018-01 2018-04 2018-07 2018-10 00,00 0 0 2,000 0 4,000 0 6,000 0 8,000 10,000 12,000 14,000 16,000 18,000 20,000 22,000 24,000 26,000 Posts by @bbusa617 Mentions of @bbusa617 Posts by @pinkk9lover Mentions of @pinkk9lover Accounts from the sample 200 mentioning @bbusa617 and @pinkk9lover @immoralreport @jamierodr10 @pinkk9lover @thebeasmith @thedrmouse @trumpwillwinnn The above image tracks @bbusa617 and @pinkk9lover. These two accounts both display a surge in activity, and also mention and retweet each other frequently. This is an example of what we call stacked surging.

5. Three Coordination Patterns When we put this analysis together, three distinct patterns emerged, which in conjunction with the past and present emphasis on Voter Fraud, indicated that a possible coordinated influence operation is happening right now. Moreover, given the scope and content of the narrative being amplified, it appeared that this network was broadly attempting to undermine the credibility of the electoral process and sabotage the broader civic dialogue around the 2018 mid-term election. The three coordination patterns are: Co-Spiking : We have seen co-spiking of accounts amplifying narratives about Voter Fraud on days when these groups of accounts tweet similar messages about Voter Fraud at the same time, on multiple occasions. This is reflected in the heartbeat pattern. Over the last three years, there have been numerous accounts consistently amplifying these narratives every day. This pattern is ongoing.

: We have seen co-spiking of accounts amplifying narratives about Voter Fraud on days when these groups of accounts tweet similar messages about Voter Fraud at the same time, on multiple occasions. This is reflected in the heartbeat pattern. Over the last three years, there have been numerous accounts consistently amplifying these narratives every day. This pattern is ongoing. Surge : Within this list of accounts we've seen numerous examples of "surge" pattern where accounts come online, start replying to other accounts, shift to posting their own content, and quickly gain @mentions in order of magnitude week over week, and month over month.

: Within this list of accounts we've seen numerous examples of "surge" pattern where accounts come online, start replying to other accounts, shift to posting their own content, and quickly gain @mentions in order of magnitude week over week, and month over month. Stacked Surging: Looking at the origin patterns of these accounts and their ongoing behavior, we see an evolutionary network pattern where clusters of accounts mention each other and collaborate around specific hashtags. By tracking this networks use of the Voter Fraud hashtag, who they mention, who mentions them, we've begun to show examples of coordination amongst the accounts amplifying the Voter Fraud narrative. We don’t know why this activity is occurring, or who is behind it. However, the best we can do is look at the data around what’s actually happening. What we've discovered along the way is that there are overlapping patterns of behavior, demonstrating some form of coordination. We think it's possible that some of these accounts don't realize that they're coordinating or part of a larger influence network. For example, one of these sample accounts might genuinely care about Voter Fraud. A bad actor, coordinating large numbers of accounts could find this person’s tweets useful, then amplify those tweets through thousands of @mentions and replies. By focusing on the hard data around coordination, we can better understand how public conservations are being distorted and how it affects society. Whatever your views are on Voter Fraud, these accounts and the accounts that amplify them are rapidly accelerating their activity in the lead-up to Election Day.

6. What else are they talking about? With this project, we set out to provide a new way for the public to understand how influence works. Inspired by the idea to combine research on the fundamental mechanics of these networks, we wanted to create an experience that can be shared to anyone, no matter the starting point, so that you can explore these accounts on your own. Today a small group of people can wield increasingly more powerful AI, big data, and psychological targeting to influence society, and we feel that it’s a fundamental human right to know who’s influencing you, how it’s happening, and why. The Founders of America understood that Democracy only worked with a well-informed public. How can we be informed if we can’t see the invisible influence shaping our society, public conversations, and the thoughts of our friends and family?

What you can do SHARE and USE this report if you care about Voting Rights, Election Integrity, and believe that America deserves to have better conversations and laws rooted in data. America has seen a dramatic increase in voterID laws, voter suppression tactics, and tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of voters kicked off the voting rolls. The justifications for these policies were built on the kind of Voter Fraud narratives amplified by the accounts that we have just shown you. There is a tragically ironic relationship between the perception that large groups of people are voting illegally, and a small group of suspicious accounts on Twitter wielding massive influence to spread disinformation, affecting the public’s understanding of Voter Fraud. The next batch of election laws and policies amplified by these type of accounts could disenfranchise large groups of Americans, undermining the core pillars of our democratic society. This group of accounts will likely be amplifying Voter Fraud related disinformation up until Election Day and beyond. Americans can’t protect each other’s rights without understanding the influence driving the conversations and laws that affect us. If you find that you or someone you know is having their voting rights violated in any way, contact the Election Protection Coalition by calling 866-OUR-VOTE or visit their website at 866ourvote.org. Reach out us to if you’re a researcher working to mitigate disinformation’s effect on Democracy. We hope you can use these new patterns of influence and incorporate them into your own work. We’re open to collaborating on how to help the public, journalists, and pro-democracy groups catch up to the evolving disinformation tactics used by bad actors.